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ENGLISH PURITANISM
ITS LEADERS
I'ltlNTED 1;Y WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS
LEADERS A**
V
SEP 19 193
CROMWELL MILTON BAXTER
BUNYAN
JOHN TULLOCH, D.D.
PRINCIPAL ANP PROFES.'fOn OF THEOI.OOV, 8T MABV'S COLLEGE, IN THE UMVERSITV
OK ST ANDREH-.S, AND ONK OF HKR MAJKSTV'S CHAPLAINS
IN ORDINARY IN SCOTI^ND
Author of " Leaders of the E«formation," Sec.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLXI
The Ri(jIU of Translation is reserved.
PREFATORY NOTE.
The history of English Puritanism still remains to be
written. Separate aspects of the subject have been
treated in detail by different \\Titers. M. Guizot, Mr
Carlyle, Mr Foster, and, from an ecclesiastical point
of view, Mr Marsden, have all contributed by their
labours to a right understanding of the great constitu-
tional and religious struggle of tlie seventeenth cen-
tury. But it cannot be said that the subject, as a
whole, in its strange complexity of political, military,
religious, moral, and social relations, has received as yet
adequate treatment. Who, for example, has pictured
to us the living features of those diverse sects, whose
presence meets us everywhere in surveying the period,
but whose real character and influence it is so difficult
to estimate?
The present volume has no pretensions to be a his-
tory of Puritanism : it professes merely to give some
side-glimpses into that history— openings into a wide
field. If it has any peculiar merit, this will probably
be found in the analysis which it presents of the moral
VI PREFATORY NOTE.
meaning and characteristics of Puritanism as exhibited
in the great lives which it tries to depict. There is
notliing in the subject that retains more interest ; and
this feeling has been present to the writer throughout,
and served to give, in his own mind, some degree of
unity to the successive sketches of the volume.
St Mary's College, St Andrews,
5th February 1861.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
1550.
1553-8.
1559.
1562.
1564-5.
1567.
1571.
1572.
1572-7.
1575-83.
1585-91.
1594.
1603.
1604.
1604-10.
1620.
1610.
1622.
1625.
Character of the English Reformation,
Calvinism and Puritanism,
Epochs in the history of Puritanism,
Rise of Puritanism. Bishop Uooper,
Marian Exile, .....
Act of Uniformity. ....
Balance of parties in the Chm-ch,
Extreme policy of Elizabeth,
Sufferings of Fox, Covordale, Sampson, Humphrey
Meeting of Dissenters in Plumbei-'s Hall,
Movements in Parliament,
Admonition of Field and Wilcox, .
Cartwright and Whitgift,
Grindal's Primacy, ....
Hooker and Travcrs,
Books of Ecclesiastical Polity,
Accession of James. Millenary Petition,
Hampton Court Conference, ,
Primacy of Bancroft,
Pilgrim Fathers, ....
Primacy of Abbot, ....
Temporary retirement of Abbot, .
Change of spirit in the Clergj',
Rise of Arminianism. Laud, .
Accession of Charles I., .
PAOK
1
10
11
13
15
16
17
18
19
19-22
23
24-27
27
30.
33
35
37
38
39
40
42
45
Vlll
CONTENTS.
Political influences, ....
Progress and culmination of the struggle.
FAGS
47
49
CROMWELL.
1599. Birth at Huntingdon,
The Cromwell family,
Childhood and youth,
1616. Student at Cambridge,
Irregularities, .
1620. Marriage,
Religious change.
Devotion to the Puritan cause,
1628. Member of Parliament for Huntingdon, .
First Speech,
1631. Removal to St Ives, ....
1635. Earliest extant Letter. Piu-itan Lecturers,
1636. Settlement at Ely,
1637. Excited state of the country, ....
1638. Spiritual darkness,
Lord of the Fens,
Nov. 1640. Meeting of Long Parliament, ....
1640-2. Progress of the conflict between the King and Par
liament,
Activity of Cromwell as Jlember for Cambridge,
Aug. 1642. Outbreak of the War,
Origin of the Ironsides,
1643. Victories at Grantham, Gainsborough, Winceby,
July 1644. Battle of Marston Moor,
Cromwell and the " Godly Party,'' .
Oct. 1644. Second battle of Newbmy, ....
Self-Denying Ordinance,
June 1645. Battle of Naseby,
April 1646. King's surrender. Close of the first Civil War,
1646-8. Intrigues and negotiations, ....
1648. Meeting of Ai-my Leaders at Windsor,
Cromwell's family,
1648. Second Civil War. Defeat of Hamilton at Preston
Dec. 1648. Col. Pryde's Purge,
Jan. 1649. Execution of Charles I
Victories in Ireland,
Scottish CampaigTi,
Sept. 1650. Battle of Dunbar,
CONTENTS.
IX
A.D.
Sept. 1651. Battle of Worcester, .
Conferences,
1653. Dismissal of the Rump,
Military genius,
Difficulties as a Statesman,
1653. Barebones, or Little Parliament,
Dec. 1653. Lord Protector of the Commonwealth,
Ecclesiastical arrangements — System of Triers,
Sept. 1654. First Protectorate Parliament,
Dissolution of Parliament — Various plots,
1655-6. The Major-Generals, ....
War with Spain,
Sept. 1656. Second Protectorate Parliament,
Negotiations as to the title of King,
1657. Dissolution of Second Parliament,
Marriages of his younger daughters.
Illness of Lady Claypole,
Sept. 1658. Cromwell's own illness and death.
Character,
PAGE
127
129
130-2
133
134
135
138
140
141
143
144
145
146
147
149
151
152
154-5
155-64
1625-32.
1628.
1632-8.
1638-9.
1640.
1641.
1643.
MILTOK
Dec. 1608. Birth and parentage,
1620-5. Early education — St Paul's school,
Poetical enthusiasm — Spenser and Du Bartas,
Student at Cambridge,
Prospects and the Church,
Twenty-three years of age,
Horton,
Early poems.
Continental journey, .
Paris — Grotius,
Florence — Galileo,
Rome, ....
Naples — Manso,
In love,
Geneva — Diodati, .
Tutor in London,
Commencement of controversial
Anti-prelatic writings.
Marriage, ....
Return home of Mrs Milton,
career.
170
173
174
175-7
178
180
181
182-6
187
ibid.
189
190
191
193
194
196
198
200-7
208
209
CONTENTS.
Salmasius
Puritanism and Anglicanism in their domestic influence, 211
1644-5. Writings on Divorce, 213-16
Writings on Education and Liberty of Printing,
1646. Reconciliation with Mrs Milton,
1646-9. Inactivity as an author,
1649. Commencement of political writings,
Secretary to the Council of State,
Iconoclastes, .....
1650. First Defence for the People of England
1654. Second Defence,
Controversy with More,
1653. Blindness,
1656. Second marriage,
Milton and Cromwell,
1658-60. Political and ecclesiastical tracts,
Review of intellectual character and influence,
Prose writings,
1660-74. Life after the Restoration,
1662-3. Third marriage.
Mismanagement of daughters,
1667. Paradise Lost,
Later poetic genius,
Puritan characteristics of his great poems
1671. Paradise Regained — Samson Agonistes,
Treatise on Christian Doctrine,
Letters and compilations.
Private habits,
1674. Death, ....
General character,
213-16
216-19
220
222
223
224
226
228-30
230
231
232
233
235-7
238-41
241-5
246-5lf
251
252
253-4
256
258
260-7
266-7
268-71
272
273-4
275
275-8
BAXTER.
Theologians of Puritanism, 281
Owen, 282-4
Howe, 285-7
1615. Birth of Baxter, 287
Disgraceful state of the Church in Shropshire, . 288-91
1625-30. Education and religious experience, . . . 292-6
Devotion to metaphysics, 297-8
1633. Visit to Court, 299
1634. Mother's death, 299
1636-8. Ill health, ' . . 300
CONTENTS.
XI
A.lj.
PAGE
Views as to Conformity,
301
1638.
Ordination and first sermon at Dudley,
302
1639.
Assistant at Bridgenorth,
303
Et Cetera Oath — Growing dislike to Prelacy, .
304
Halation to political movements of 1640-2,
305
1641.
Call to Kidderminster,
306
Retirement from Kidderminster, . . . .
307
1642.
Battle of Edgehill,
308
1642-5.
Settlement at Coventry,
310
Baxter and the Ai-my,
312-13
Relations to Cromwell,
314
Picture of Harrison,
316
Account of the Sects,
317-27
1646.
Ill health and withdrawal from the Army,
328-9
Samts' Rest,
330-1
1647.
Return to Kidderminster, ....
332
1651.
Opposition to Cromwell,
333
1653.
Inter^'iew with Cromwell, ....
335
Labours at Kidderminster, ....
337-9
Powers as a preacher,
340-2
"Writings at Kidderminster, ....
343
Missionary aspu-ations,
344
1658-9.
Relation to Richard Cromwell,
345
1660.
Settlement in London,
346
Pi-esbyterians and the Restoration,
349
Chaplain to the King,
351
Meeting at Sion College, ....
353
Reformed Liturgy,
354-9
.
Royal declaration,
355
Savoy Conference,
358
Negotiations as to Kidderminster, .
360
May 1661
. Act of Uniformity,
362
Aug. 1662
. St Bartholomew's day,
363
Marriage,
364
1663.
Conventicle Act,
364
1665.
Five-Mile Act,
365
Life at Acton,
366
1672.
Dispensing declaration — Resumption of preaching.
367
1672-82.
Persecutions,
, 368-70
1685.
Trial before JeflPreys,
. 371-3
1688.
Revolution— Act of Toleration,
374
1691.
Death,
375
Works,
376
xu
CONTENTS.
Characteristics as a theologian and preacher,
Personal character, ....
PAGE
378-87
387-90
BUNIAN.
Spiritual life of Puritanism,
Relation of Bunyan to this spiritual life,
1628. Birth at Elstow,
Wildness of youth,
Religious impressions.
Providential escapes,
1645. Siege of Leicester,
Maj-riage, .
Spiritual excitement.
Poor women of Bedford,
Withdrawal from evil companions.
Ranters — Antinomianism,
New views of Scripture,
Gifford and Congregation of Baptists at Bedford
Spiritual temptations,
Luther's Commentary on the Galatians,
Further temptations,
Justification by Faith — Peace, .
Admission to Baptist Communion, .
1656. Set apart to preach, ....
Character of early preaching,
Dispute with the Quakers,
Slanders,
1660. Arrest and examination before the Bedford Justices
Quarter-Sessions — Renewed examination,
Imprisonment,
1661. Assizes at Bedford— Sir Matthew Hale,
Bunyan' s second wife.
Continued imprisonment.
Origin of Pilgrini's Progress,
The Holy City, or the New Jerusalem,
Poems,
1672. Controversy with Bishop Fowler,
Liberation fi-om prison.
Controversy with Baptist leaders,
1678. PubUcation of Pilgrim's Progress,
Popularity as a preacher — Female admirers.
CONTENTS.
Xlll
Sermons,
1682. Publication of the Hohj War, .
1684. Second Part of Pilgrim's Progress,
1688. Journey to Reading — Death,
Character, ....
Allegories, ....
Puritan portraits in the allegories.
Pseudo-religious portraits,
Excellences and deficiencies of Puritanism
FAOE
470
472
472
473
474-6
477-81
482-4
485-6
487-8
ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS
INTEODUCTION
The history of English Puritanism is the history both
of a theological movement and of a great national
straggle. The spirit of which Puritanism is the sym-
bol has entered deeply into the national life, and
strongly coloured many of its manifestations. It has
given depth and passion not only to the religion, but
to the literature and patriotism of the country ; it has
largely contributed alike to its intellectual lustre and
heroic fame. No one, therefore, can understand the
sources of our mixed civilisation without studying the
great Puritanical movement of the seventeenth century.
It is necessary to penetrate to the heart of this move-
ment, and find some sympathetic point of connection
with it, before we can appreciate some of the most
powerful influences which have moulded the English
people and made them what they are. Otherwise, as
with some of our historians, the face of the facts may
be observed and delineated, but their genuine mean-
ing will be missed, and the moral forces out of which
they grew and consolidated into history wiU remain
unintelligible.
2 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
Britain was the national soil in which the seeds of
the Eeformation were destined to take the deepest and
most enduring root. Germany did far more to origin-
ate and strengthen the movement in its beginnings ;
France, in many of its highest minds, showed a more
ready receptivity and welcome to the new religious
ideas ; England could boast neitlier a Luther nor a
Calvin : but the spiritual impulses out of which the
movement grew, and which constituted its real life
and strength, found in the Anglo-Saxon character their
most congenial seat, their highest affinities, their most
solid nutriment. Slowly, and under many hindrances,
they spread, unaided by the powerful influence of
any great teacher, but sinking always more into the
depths of this character, and gaining a firmer hold of
it. "While dying out in Germany, and hardly able to
maintain themselves in France against the fierce odds
with which they had to contend, they continued to
propagate and gather force in England amidst all
obstacles, and only attained, after the lapse of a cen-
tury, and under many modifications of struggle and
conquest, to their full development.
The English Eeformation had a double origin. It
sprang at once from the people and the court. It was the
effect of a renewed spiritual excitement in the Church
and in society ; it was also the creature of statecraft
and royal policy. Erasmus's Greek Testament, and
Tyndall's Bible, were the great agents on the one side ;
Henry VIII. 's matrimonial necessities, and the tradi-
tional anti-Eomish policy of the Crown, were the mov-
ing springs on the other. In its earlier stages, and for
long, the latter element assumed and exercised the pre-
dominance. The Eeform movement in England became
characteristically an official movement : the sovereign
INTRODUCTION. ^
was its guide and head ; the State aimed to direct and
regulate the course of innovation, and to mould the
new Protestantism into conformity with the historical
constitution and venerated usages of the old Catholi-
cism. But, under all this official guidance, there had
lived from the first a religious earnestness and active
zeal for reform, impatient of control. The spiritual in-
dividualism which the Eeformation everywhere called
forth was in Eniiland held in check, but not extin-
guished, by the jealous watchfulness of the State.
Even the firmness of the Tudor policy was not able
to destroy, however it restrained, this moral force.
Whether, if this policy had been persevered in, it
might have proved successful, and the spiritual ele-
ment of the Eeformation coalesced more completely
with the temporal, it is hard to say. The close of
Elizabeth's life was not without some signs of such an
issue. But, as it was, the spirit of religious reform
gathered fresh impulse from the very circumstances
which were meant to crush it ; and, after years of
insult and oppression, it first matched and then mas-
tered the royal policy with which it had been so long
in conflict.
It was characteristic of the aggressive spirit of the
English Pteformation, that it should ally itself with
that branch of continental Protestantism which was
most thorough and logical in its expression and re-
sults. As it was the aim of the state-party, while
breaking with the Pope, to preserve unbroken the con-
tinuity of Catholicism, so it was the aim of the more
radical Pteformers to depart as far as possible from
Popery. The one side desired to preserve the histori-
cal, traditions, the medieval forms of worship, and the
hierarchical framework of the Church of England ; the
4 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
other side desired, in tlie spirit of the Swiss and
French Protestants, to base the reformation, both of
doctrine and discipline, anew and directly upon Scrip-
ture. This was a natural consequence of the profound
evangelical consciousness quickened by Scripture, and
appearing to be everywhere reflected in its pages, out
of which the deeper movement sprang. It was the
consequence, also, in a great degree, of the peculiar
tendencies of the time, and the special character of
the Calvinistic Eeformation.
Unlike Lutheranism, Calvinism maintained a vi-
gorous and progressive influence long after its first
reforming excitement was spent. Less broad and mag-
nanimous in its beginnings, it was far more concen-
trated and impulsive in its aims. Eliciting in a far
less degree the welcoming humours of a free and
sympathetic humanity, it found in its very narrow-
ness and inward intensity, rather than genial fulness,
its chief strength. It attained to more clear and
systematic aims ; it knew its own resources and hus-
banded them ; while its dogmatic consistency and in-
tellectual masterliness exercised a powerful charm
over many minds at a distance, and gave to its prin-
ciples a systematic and well-directed efficiency. The
result was, that while Lutheranism, after little more
than a quarter of a century's living action, was wasting
itself in controversy equally violent and feeble, and
rapidl}^ passing into a barren dogmatism, Calvmism
was still making vigorous conquests, and drawing
to itself fresh accessions of force. It came to repre-
sent the cause of Protestantism abroad more promi-
nently and boldly than the older movement ; and the
Protestant spirit of England, amidst its conflicts, in-
stinctively turned to Geneva, as its great model and
INTRODUCTION. 5
guide. Calvinism became, if not the progenitor, yet
the nursing-mother of Puritanism.
This movement in England towards the Genevan
Keformation was greatly accelerated and strengthened
by special circumstances. On the accession of Mary,
and the triumph of the medieval party, multitudes
of the most active Eeformers fled to the Continent.
Geneva, and other Swiss and Ehine towns, were
the refuges of these Protestant emigres ; and in this
manner they came into immediate contact with Cal-
vinism, learned its religious and ecclesiastical spirit
of independence, became accustomed to the imposing
outline of its doctrine and the simple severity of its
ritual, and, in many cases, adopted firmly its consti-
tutional principles. In these years the influence of
Calvin's personal character and mental power was at
its height ; no single man exercised such a sway within
the sphere of Protestantism ; and all who were brought
near it carried away ineffaceable traces of the spirit
which it represented and embodied.
In tracing this connection between Puritanism and
Calvinism, it is necessary to notice, that it was an
ecclesiastical, stiU. more peculiarly than a doctrinal
sympathy, that united them. So far as doctrine
was concerned, there was no division as yet in the
Church of England. It might be too much to say that
the English Church was in the sixteenth century uni-
versally Calvinistic in its theology. Such an assertion
would not allow for those Catholic peculiarities of
thought which have always distinguished the highest
divines of this Church, and given a certain breadth
and freedom to their dogmatic views, even when these
were most closely allied to the technical modes of
Calvinistic opinion. Jewell and Hooker, for example,
6 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
while coinciding with this opinion in their doctrinal
conclusions, are yet far more than Calvinists in a
certain comprehensiveness and genial width of view.
But if not exclusively or rigidly Genevan in doctrine,
even under the primacy of Whitgift, the Church of
England Avas yet so far from finding any cause of
quarrel in this doctrine, that it embodied it substan-
tially iu its thirty-nine articles ; while AVhitgift's well-
known Lambeth articles* remain to testify how far
more closely he and others were prepared to bring the
creed of the Church of England into conformity with
the Genevan theology in its most extreme forms.
The cause of quarrel, therefore, was not in this source,
but in an entirely different one. It was the disciplinal
and not the doctrinal element of the Genevan Eeform
which, carried back to England, planted the seed of
widening discord in English Protestantism. Nay, it
was something far narrower in its beginning than even
any general question of church discipline. Never has
a great movement in a civilised country sprung from
a more trivial cause. It is like tracing some gigantic
river, renowned for the great cities along which it has
swept, the hurrying interests which it has borne on its
bosom, and the scenes of struggle and associations of
interest which mark its course, to its source in some
streamlet, noisy but insignificant. In its outset, Puri-
tanism brings us face to face with no vital interest,
* Hooker's criticisms on these articles mark very well the difiference
indicated in the text between the characteristic theology of the Chm-ch
of England and Calvinism. The comprehensive mind of Hooker, with
its broader and more genial survey of theological literature, at once de-
tected the narro%vness of the proposed articles, and nothing can show
better than his remarks the fine balance of his spiritual judgment.
Whitgift's mind was acute and powerful, but narrow and polemical in
comparison with Hooker s.
INTRODUCTION. 7
with no grand circumstance of dogmatic or spiritual
earnestness ; it seems a mere petty thougii violent con-
tention between rival bishops ; yet it grew into a great
creed, a significant principle, a systematic and trium-
phant policy. It did so because it masked, from the
very first, principles of the broadest distinction. The
"vestiary" controversy was the mere shaft into the
mine in which slumbered elements of the most power-
ful opposition ready to burst into flame.
It will conduce to the clearness and interest of our
succeeding pages to mark briefly the progress of the
controversy to the point at which our sketches begin.
Up to this point, Puritanism had run through two dis-
tinct stages of its career. In the first stage, which may
be said to close with the reign of Elizabeth, it continued
very much such a contest as it began — a contest in
the main regarding church order and ceremony — in
which we can trace sufficiently the opening of a deeper
issue of principles, but during which it still seemed
possible that these principles might find some peaceful
solution. In the second stage, which lasted during the
reign of James, and that of his son, to the eve of the
memorable parliament so associated with the triumphs
of Puritanism, the controversy, while still largely re-
taining its ecclesiastical character, took at the same
time a higher and wider range. Starting from the de-
fined basis of the Millenary petition, it became mingled
in the course of these reigns with new and exciting
interests, both theological and political, and gradually
passed into a great party conflict — a wide schism of
thought and feeling, of manners and policy. In the
ninety years that fill up the interval, a quarrel as to
the dress of bishops had grown into an incurable oppo-
8 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
sition of faitli and an antagonism of constitutional
principle which could only settle itself by the sword.
A case of casuistry, in which prelate had encountered
prelate in the antechamber of Edward VI., had waxed
into a national crisis, and was fast assuming the pro-
portions of a civil struggle.
The appointment of Hooper to the see of Gloucester
in 1550, marks the well-known rise of the Puritan con-
troversy. After his nomination, he refused to be in-
ducted in the customary robes of the Eomish priest-
hood, which had never been abolished. Hooper had
lived abroad, and was the friend of Bullinger. His
natural sensitiveness regarding the idolatrous charac-
ter of the rites of the Church of Eome, had been quick-
ened and exaggerated by his residence in Switzerland.
He was an able and earnest man, a powerful and un-
tiring preacher,* but possessed of a scrupulous and
somewhat vehement temper. He not only refused to
wear the robes, but he considered himself bound to
preach vehemently against them. Cranmer and Eidley,
especially the latter, interposed in behalf of Episcopal
order ; and the dispute became so hot and intolerable,
that Hooper was confined by order of the Privy Coun-
cil, first to his house, and then to the Fleet. The
young king, who at first sought to mediate in the con-
troversy, it is said, at length " grew very angry with
Mr Hooper for his unreasonable stiffness."
Two eminent foreign divines, Peter Martyr and
Bucer, filled at this time the respective professorships
of divinity at Oxford and Cambridge. Their counsel
was sought in the case, and both strongly advised
* "He preaches four, or at least three times every day." — Letter of
his wife to Bullinger, 1551. Burnet, iii.
INTRODUCTION. ' 9
Hooper to abandon his scruples ; not that they approved
of the vestments — Martyr, in fact, expressed a wish
that they should be abandoned — but because they did
not consider their use in any way sinful or entitled to
interfere with admission into his office in the usual
manner. Hooper was not immediately moved, but at
last he consented to a compromise. He submitted to
wear the robes at liis consecration, and to appear and
preach in them at least once.* Afterwards, he was to
be at liberty to do as he liked.
Hooper's episcopate thus contentiously began, ter-
minated ere long in martyrdom. In the sight of the
cathedral to which he had been consecrated four years
before, he and Pddley, his old opponent, suffered to-
gether. Their differences had all vanished in the glory
of the testimony which they then rejoiced to render to
their common faith. They had been " two in white,"
in the quaint and touching language of the message
that passed between them at the awful moment of their
fate ; but they were now " one in red."
The excitement of the " vestiary " controversy was
not extinguished in the flames of Hooper's martyr-
dom. For a while, it necessarily sank out of sight
during the more serious dangers that menaced Protest-
antism in the reign of Mary. But the spirit out
of which it sprang continued to live on and to gather
strength. The national return to Eomanism, and the
ease in many respects with which the transition was
made, only proved to many minds an incentive to de-
* These robes, besides the surplice, consisted in the chimere, a long
scarlet robe, ■worn loose down to the foot, and the rochet, a white linen
vestment covering the shoulders. These garments, adapted fi'om those
of the Jewish priesthood, were held by the Church of Rome to be emble-
matical of the sacrificial efficacy of the Chi-istian priesthood ; and hence
their peculiar obnoxiousness to the Puritan.
10 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
part further from all its iisages, and to identify Pro-
testantism with a form of worship as far as possible
removed from all its rites. On the other hand, there
were some like Dr Cox, the well-known tutor of King
Edward, who gathered from their sufferings only a
deeper love for the ritual, such as it had been set forth
in the preceding reign, and whose Protestantism, while
it remained loyal to the policy of Cranmer, shrank
from all further encroachment with extreme jealousy
and distaste. With the one class, contact with the
Eeformed polity abroad elicited sympathy and admir-
ation— in not a few cases led to new convictions and
desires ; with the other class, it only evoked a more
ardent devotion to their home form of worship and
all its associations. What have been called the
" Frankfort Troubles," were the most significant and
notable expression of this disunion during the period
of the Marian Exile. These troubles were petty and
discreditable to the cause of English Protestantism ;
and they left behind them a bitterness which served
to inflame the discords which soon again broke out in
the restored Church of England.
On the accession of Elizabeth the country presented
a peculiar aspect. The Catholics, although they had
lost their chief support in the Crown, remained a great
and powerful party — the most compact and decided
party beyond doubt in the country. The Protestants re-
turned from their four and a half years' exile with their
hatred of Popery inflamed, and the most illustrious and
able among them considerably more advanced in their
views of reform. There were, indeed, men like Cox,
who had little advanced ; but Jewell and Grindal,
Sandys, Horn, and Parkhurst, had all learned to dis-
INTRODUCTION. 11
lilve the " ceremonies " .as savouring of Popery ; while
others, such as old Miles Coverdale, and Fox the
martyrologist, and Whitehead (whom Elizabeth wished
to make primate, but whose conscience scrupled both
at the dignity and its accompaniments), not only
cherished a deep aversion to the ceremonies, but had
strongly imbibed the Calvinistic principle, that nothing
should be "ordered" in the Church which was not
warranted and required in the word of God.
The Qaeen herself was genuinely Protestant in con-
viction. She inherited not only the proud national
spirit of her father against Eoine, but she understood
far more than he did the grounds of theological differ-
ence between the Churches, and had oiven her intelli-
gent assent to the side of Protestantism. At the same
time she possessed all her father's love of display and
authority. She was no less strong in her admiration
of the old ritual, and her determination to uphold the
prerogatives of the Crown in the government of the
Church, than she was strong in her opposition to
Eome and her disbelief of its grosser superstitions. She
preserved a crucifix in her own chapel to the last, and
she had no idea of any church order that did not
emanate from her own royal will and pleasure.
Elizabeth acted as might have been supposed from
her circumstances and character. She strengthened
her Crown against the Catholics by the Act of Supre-
macy, but she reserved all power of Church reform in
her own hands by the Act of Uniformity. This act
not only prescribed and enforced the Booh of Common
Prayer and the administration of the sacraments, as set
forth 5 and 6 Edward VI., and the use of such eccle-
siastical ornaments as were customary in the second
year of this reign, but empowered the Queen with
\^
12 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
her commissioners to ordain and publish such further
ceremonies and rites as might be "necessary for the
advancement of God's glory and the edifying of His
Church." It was grievous enough to some of the
extreme Protestants to return to the church order of
the second year of Edward, with all its superstitious
usages as they deemed them ; but this power reserved
to the Queen, of adding indefinitely to ecclesiastical
ceremonies, was peculiarly obnoxious to them, as it
proved peculiarly galling in its exercise.
Upon this "fatal rock of Uniformity," says Neale, "was
the peace of the Church of England split." The most
eminent of the clergy were in favour of leaving off the
usages which had been the subject of so much conten-
tion. Grindal and Jewell were strongly committed
against the vestments. The latter had spoken of them
as the " relics of the Amorites." Even Parker him-
self was at first liberal, and indisposed to any violent
measures. He was glad to have the assistance of old
Miles Coverdale (who had been in Edward's reign
Bishop of Exeter) in his consecration, although Cover-
dale refused to appear in anything but his black Geneva
gown. He concurred with Grindal in providing a
sphere of labour — the church and parish of St Magnus,
at the corner of Fish Street — for the stern old man,
when no arguments would induce him to resume his
episcopal duties. There was even a party at Court
secretly inclined to favour the extreme Protestants.
Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in the midst of his other
intrigues, held close relations with some of them. He
courted and patronised them, under the idea that they
might be unconsciously serviceable to his criminal
ambition.
It is not wonderful if, in such circumstances, manv
INTRODUCTION. 13
of the clergy exercised their freedom in the matter
of the contested ceremonies. Nay, as might be ex-
pected, the spirit of aggression gained ground, and
not merely the vestments, but many collateral points
— such as holy days, the cross at baptism, kneeling
at communion, and the use of organs — were largely
canvassed, and their abolition strongly urged by a
vigorous and increasing party. Nothing, perhaps,
can more strongly show the extent to which this
aggressive spirit had spread, than the debate which
took place in the Convocation which met after Eliza-
beth's second Parliament in 1562, when the pro-
posals of the Puritan party for reform, in such mat-
ters as have been mentioned, under the leadership
of Dean Nowel, the prolocutor, were only lost by a
majority of one. The numbers stood 58, 59. Of those
present, in fact, a majority voted in favour of the
proposals,* but the scale was turned by proxies. So
nearly were the parties divided within the Church.
Such a state of things, it may be augured, was far
r
* The proposals, which were a modification of those originally brought
in, less minute, and upon the whole less radical in their spirit, stood as
follows: —
"1. That all Sundays in the year, and principal feasts of Christ, be kept
holy days ; and that all other holy days be abrogated.
" 2. That in all parish churches, the minister in common-prayer turn
his face towards the people, and then read distinctly the service ap-
pointed, that the people may hear and be edified.
" 3. That in baptism the cross be omitted, as tending to superstition.
"4. Forasmuch as divers communicants are not able to kneel for age
and sickness at the sacrament, and others kneel and think supersti-
tiously, that therefore the order of kneeling may be left to the discretion
of the ordinaiy.
" 5. That it be sufficient for the minister, in time of saying divine
service, and ministering of the sacraments (once), to wear a surjslice ; and
that no minister say service or minister the sacraments, but in a comely
garment or habit.
" 6. Tliat the use of organs be removed." — Neale, vol. i. 143.
14 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
from pleasing to Elizabeth. In the prevailing dis-
affection among the clergy, she saw not only her own
supposed rights invaded — a right which no Tudor, and
she least of all, could behold with complacency ; but she
and some of her counsellors, moreover, believed that
they saw in it serious danger to her state and crown.
The great idea of the Church of England, being one
and the same (semper eadem was her favourite eccle-
siastical motto) under all the vicissitudes which it had
undergone, seemed likely to fade away before the grow-
ing spirit of innovation. The Catholics, many of whom,
by the preservation of the ceremonies and the framework
of the Church, might be supposed gradually drawn to
submission and loyalty, were likely to be altogether
alienated by further changes. This apprehension as
to the Catholics was real and urgent, and was acknow-
ledged to be such as well by the anxieties of the Puri-
tans as by the fears of the Court. It was the constant
argument of the former, that the retention of the Popish
habits inclined the nation to Popery. " If we compel
the godly to conform themselves to the Papists," wrote
Whittingham, " I fear greatly lest we fall to Papism!^
" AVliile Popish superstitions have the broad seal, and
while Popish pomp doth allure and awe the people,
wherewithal," argued Miles Coverdale, " shall they be
restrained from backsliding to Eome ?" — a view which
was encouraged by reported sayings of Bonner and
others, who professed to see, in the retained usages, an
evident symptom that the nation would soon again
relapse into Popery. " An they sup of our broth they
will soon eat of our beef," was the somewhat coarse
joke attributed to Bonner. Accordingly, the Puritans
earnestly identified the triumph of Protestantism with
the abolition of all Popish ceremonies. The offences
INTRODUCTION. 15
done to the Catholics by such an abolition, was to
them one of the principal recommendations of the
step. It was a blow to Antichrist which would help
its downfall ; and the necessities of the State were to
them a secondary and unimportant thought. But this
was necessarily to Elizabeth herself, and men like Cecil
— the primary consideration, to which all others must
yield. The Catholics could not be outraged and
driven to rebellion without peril to the Crown, and
ruin to all the best interests of the nation. It is im-
possible to doubt that this was a real exigency. It is
perhaps too much to say that it was a defence of Eliza-
beth's conduct in the repressive measures which, in
conjunction with Parker, she now resolved to adopt
against the aggressive or Puritan party in the Church.
In the beginning of 1564-5 the Queen addressed a
letter to the archbishop on the subject of " ceremonial
diversities " and " novelties of rites " in the Church,
which, "through the negligence of her bishops, had
crept in and were on the increase." These, she said
emphatically, " must needs provoke the displeasure of
Almighty God, and hring danger of rtdn to the people
and the country;'' and she accordingly charged him
to investigate into the disorders, and to take means
that "uniformity of order may be kept in every
church." The result of this investigation was, that
a book of articles was drawn up for enforcing uni-
formity, which did not, owing to the secret opposi-
tion of Dudley and others, receive the sanction of
the Privy Council, but which became practically the
rule of Episcopal action. The most important of
its provisions was, subscription on the part of the
clergy to certain promises, which placed them entirely
as to preaching under the control of their bishop, and
16 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
bound them to the use of the apparel and other institu-
tions as already established in the Church.
Fox the martyrologist, Coverdale, and Wliitehead,
were among the most conspicuous victims of the sys-
tem of repression upon which Parker now zealously
entered. He had not been very forward to move, but,
having once " stirred in the affair," he, and some more
of the bishops, acted with a determination and vigour
which outran the more cautious policy of Cecil. He
professed at last to see that not only were " the rites
of apparel now in danger, but all other rites univer-
sally." * Fox refused to subscribe to the promises of
the Book of Articles or Advertisements, as it came to
be called, and was dismissed in disgrace to his quiet
Salisbury prebend. Such respect was entertained
for his " age, parts, and pains," that the Bishops did
not venture to take any further steps against him.-
Whitehead was suspended ; but the somewhat singular
favour that he enjoyed with Elizabeth as '' a man of
parts, but more as a clergyman unmarried" formed
also a shield of protection to him. Upon " poor old
Miles " the persecution fell more heavily. He was
driven from his humble benefice of St Magnus, and
died in a few years in great poverty. Sampson, Dean
of Christ Church, and Humphrey, President of Mag-
dalene College, Oxford, were also summoned before
the ecclesiastical commissioners, and the former de-
prived of his deanery. The harshness of this measure
was aggravated by the fact that Sampson, along with
his companions Humphrey, Lever, and others, were
so far from being extreme in their views, that many of
the ultra-Puritans looked upon them with dislike, and
altogether disowned their preaching.
* Strype's Parker, 161 ; A nnals, ii. 129.
INTRODUCTION. 17
It would be impossible for us to trace minutely the
course of the controversy, and the persecutions to
which it gave rise in the time of Elizabeth. The
subject is a history in itself. We can only briefly
glance at the two main phases into which the contro-
versy ran during this period. These phases mark a
certain definite advance in the principles which guided
both sides.
The first is represented by the dispute between
Cartwright and Whitgift. This dispute had its origin
in various causes. Personal bitterness between the
combatants helped to inflame public animosity. They
had been rival disputants at the university of Cam-
bridge. Cartwright, as professor of divinity, had
identified himself with the movement party, and ven-
tured freely to discuss the new ecclesiastical policy
in his lectures. Whitgift, as vice-chancellor of the
university, keenly took the opposite side, and, by his
influence, silenced and expelled from his office the
professor of divinity. Cartwright was driven abroad,
but his spirit survived at home, and circumstances
soon occurred to draw him again into the field.
In many of the younger clergy the Protestant schism
was fast spreading, and assuming a more definite and
irreconcilable form. A small band of more zealous
spirits even went the length of establishing themselves
into a separate congregation on the basis of the Gen-
evan plan of government. Plumber's Hall, in Anchor's
Lane, became the scene of the first meeting of Dis-
senters from the Church of England, in the month of
June 1567. The appearance of the sheriffs dispersed
the infant congregation, thirty-one of whom, men and
women, were seized and hurried to prison. The fact
of such an attempt at ecclesiastical separation was re-
B
18 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
garded with dismay. Even many among the bishops,
who had hitherto befriended those opposed to the cere-
monies, and especially the vestments, were shocked at
such an open expression of variance from the Church,
and joined with their brethren in adopting means to
arrest it. Grindal, in so far, was united with Parker,
although, with the mildness characteristic of him,
he prevailed with Cecil and the Lords of Council to
dismiss the present offenders after a brief imprison-
ment, but, at the same time, with a solemn warning of
greater severity should they persist in their factious
conduct.
The Parliament of 1 571 met amidst continued ex-
citement, and no fewer than seven bills for the " Ee-
formation of Ceremonies in matters of Eeligion and
Church Government " were introduced. The Com-
mons showed a strong sympathy for further reforma-
tion. Mr Strickland, a " grave and ancient man, of
great zeal," spoke boldly. " There be abuses in the
Church of England, there be also abuses of church-
men— all these it were high time were corrected."
He received a summons to attend the Privy Council
for his plain speaking, and was temporarily detained
from the House. Peter Wentworth spoke with no less
freedom, and formed one of a committee of six who
waited upon the archbishop touching a " model of
reformation." Nothing, however, followed these ex-
pressions of discontent, except a more determined zeal
on the part of the Crown and the Bench to enforce the
laws for uniformity. Only three of the seven bills were
passed to the House of Lords, and all of them finally
fell to the ground.
A new Parliament opened in May 1572, with a
speech from the Lord Keeper, in which he complained
INTRODUCTION. 19
of tlie neglect of tlie " laudable rites and ceremonies of
the Church, the very ornaments of our religion ; " and
recommended that systematic means should be adopted
by the bishops for correcting this neglect, " that thus
the civil sword might support the sword ecclesiastic."*
Wliile this was the temper of tlie Court, that of many
of the clergy was increasing in boldness. Two of their
number, of the names of Field and Wilcox, presented,
after careful preparation, a document to this Parlia-
ment, entitled " An Admonition for Eeformation of
Church Discipline." It keenly exposed the corrup-
tions of the hierarchy and the proceedings of the
bishops ; and, after setting forth a new platform of
Church government, craved that the Church of Eng-
land might be remodelled according to it, in greater
conformity to the Word of God and the foreign
Eeformed Churches. Both the authors were ajDpre-
hended and committed to Newgate ; but their bold-
ness only served to call into the field an abler and
more vigorous champion, who had already whetted
his pen in the controversy.
Thomas Cartwright had lately returned from exile,
with all his Puritan convictions deepened and streng-
thened. He was an attentive observer of the pro-
ceedings in Parliament, and when the writers of the
original " Admonition " were violently withdrawn from
the scene of conflict, he prepared and published a
" Second Admonition," more importunate, and to the
same effect, which came out, according to Heylin,
"with such a flash of lightning, and such claps of
thunder, as if heaven and earth were presently to have
met together." Whitgift, in the mean time, had joined
in the fray ; and, with the direct concurrence of Parker
* D'EWES, 195.
20 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
and Cooper, the Bishop of Lincoln published a reply
to the first "Admonition." The sight of his old ad-
versary roused Cartwright's blood, and the controversy
between them became a prolonged and vehement one.
Cartwiight replied to his answer; Whitgift rejoined
at great length, both to Cartwright's "Admonition,"
and his attack upon himself; and Cartwright again
returned to the charge. The "untempered speeches,"
" hard words," "bitter reproaches " ("as it were sticks
and coals"), which the Puritan hurled at the church-
man, were sufficiently met by the " flouts," " oppro-
bries," "slanders and disdainful phrases," which the
latter imputed to the Puritan.""' On both sides rude-
ness and vituperation too frequently outweigh sense
and reason ; and the main drift of the argument loses
itself in the muddy and wearying channel of per-
sonal abuse. Each, however, contended with marked
ability, and, beyond doubt, represented the most vigor-
ous intellect of his party ; Cartwright displaying, per-
haps, more vigorous eloquence and rough sense in
details, a more pungent and superior polemical learn-
ing ; Whitgift more elevation, comprehension, and
thoughtful force in general reasoning.
Cartwright, under all his vehemence and bitterness,
gives us the idea of a very manly and honest nature ;
a man of fiery impulses, but of a free and courageous
spirit. There is something, also, pathetic in the hard-
ships and sadness of his fate, in comparison with that
of his prosperous adversary. Pellow-students and rival
theologians, they had preached from the same univer-
sity pulpit ; the same career seemed before them.
* Whitgift does not even disdain to reproach his adversary with
the poverty which his own harshness had inflicted. — Worh Parker
Society, vol. i. pp. 45-6, 84.
INTKODUCTION. 21
But Whitgift then, as afterwards, had chosen the
winnmg side. He was first made Dean of Lincoln,,
then Bishop of Worcester, and finally raised to the see
of Canterbury. Cartwright was twice driven abroad,
" little better than a wandering beggar." On his second
return he was seized and imprisoned by order of
Aylmer, Bishop of London, whose character, amidst
the oppressions of the time, stands out as peculiarly
contemptible, in the vindictive severities with which
it is associated. After his liberation he was jealously
watched, forbidden to write, and again, after the death
of Leicester, who had patronised him, imprisoned along
with a number of other Puritan divines, till he was
finally released in 1592, and allowed to die in ob-
scurity. The way of the Puritan was certainly not a
way of pleasantness. Only one pleasing gleam lights
up the harsh relations between him and Whitgift.
After the latter was made primate, he is said to have
sought an interview with his old adversary, and to have
offered him kindness. A softening impression was left
on the minds of both. Whitgift was sufficiently severe ;
but, unlike Aylmer, there was magnanimity in his
severity— he harboured no petty malignity ; and after
all that had passed between hmi and Cartwright, he
showed the latter such friendliness as to draw from
his friend and patron, the Earl of Leicester, a letter of
thanks for his " favourable and courteous usage."
The principles maintained in their controversy
show the deeper vein into which Puritanism was
running. It was no longer merely the accessories of
f worship that were in dispute, but the subjects of Church
v) government and authority in themselves. Cartwright
contended that Scripture was the standard of Church
government and discipline as well as of doctrine — nay,
22 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
that it was the only standard of rule as of truth in the
Church, and that the English hierarchy must be reduced
to the Presbyterian pattern of Scriptural simplicity.
The opposition was no longer merely to the Popish
ceremonies, but to the whole structure of the Anglican
polity, as at variance with Scripture. AVhitgift main-
tained, on the other side, that Scripture was not
designed as a standard of ecclesiastical polity ; that
this polity, on the contrary, was a fair subject for ar-
rangement on the part of the State and the superiors of
the Church. The Churchman occupied the ground of
expediency, destined, ere long, to a far higher elabora-
tion and defence ; the Nonconformist urged the argu-
ment of divine right. The latter had already taken up
his full dogmatic position ; the former not yet.
During some years the controversy continued with
great keenness and with various alternations of feeling
towards the Puritans. After Whitgift and Cartwright
had laid aside their pens, a swarm of minor writers
took up the quarrel, and the famous Martin Mar-
prelate's* pamphlets on the Puritan side, and others
not a wdiit behind them in scurrility on the Church
side, f attest the vehemence of excitement which actu-
ated and convulsed the nation.
The death of Parker in 1575, and the appointment
of Grindal to the primacy, were favourable to the move-
ment. Grindal's well-known predilections, his natural
* "A vizored knight, behind whose shield a host of sturdy Puritans
were supposed to fight." — Hallam, vol. i. p. 220.
"i" Such as " A Fig for my Godson ; or, Crack me this Nut," — that is,
"A sound Box of the Ear for the Idiot Martin to hold his Peace ;" and "An
Almond for a Parrot," by Cuthbert Curry -knave — the pseudonyme of Tom
Nash, who was, says Walton, " a man of sharp wit, and the master of a
scoffing, satirical, merry pen. " The Cobbler's Book," and " Ha' ye any
work for the Cooper ? " are specimens of the titles on the Puritan .or
"Martin Marprelate" side.
INTRODUCTION. 23
mildness and apostolical simplicity of character, con-
duced to mitigate the rule of uniformity, and to open
up the way for a temporary freedom. The " prophesy-
ings," as they were called, had been begun in the pre-
ceding primacy. They were designed to meet the
great lack of intelligent and godly preaching through-
out the land. The clergy and others in a district met
together, and engaged in the exposition of Scripture,
and in other exercises of religious edification. Such
meetings were the expression of a prevailing spirit of
religious earnestness, but also to some extent of the
growing spirit of ecclesiastical freedom. They were
not likely to be acceptable, therefore, in high quarters.
Elizabeth frowned, and Parker put them down. But
Grindal was no sooner established in his office than he
took the prophesyings under his protection. The result
was, that he came into collision with the Queen, fell
into disgrace, and was banished the Court. He himself
cared little for the royal disfavour in such a cause ; but
the party who looked to him for protection experienced .
in many ways the effects of his exclusion from the
national counsels. Aylmer's bigoted and persecuting
activity was allowed to run riot. ^
The reins of archiepiscopal authority soon passed
into firmer hands. Grindal died in 1583, and Whit-
gift was promoted to the primacy. "There was no
danger," remarks Strype,* " of Ms Grindalising by
winking at the plots and practices of the Puritan fac-
tion." His character was too well established, and his
ecclesiastical position taken up too definitely. Yet the
Queen was not content to leave him merely to his own
impulses. She "straitly" instructed "to be vigilant
and careful for the reducing of all ministers to the.
* Strtpe's Whitgifi, 114.
24 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
settled order and government;" "to restore the dis-
cipline of the Church and the uniformity in the ser-
vice of God established by Parliament, which, through
the connivance of the prelates, the obstinacy of the
Puritans, and the power of some noblemen, was run
out of square."* Whitgift was not slow to justify the
expectations, and to avail himself of the ample powers,
reposed in him. He devised three articles for the
further enforcement of uniformity, and issued orders
for their subscription throughout his province. Many
clergy refused, and in consequence were suspended,
and finally deprived if they continued obstinate. The
primate never for a moment relaxed his watchful jeal-
ousy ; the Queen was strongly assenting, even when
the law was somewhat stretched to reach offenders ;
repression, systematic, and far-seeing, became the order
of ecclesiastical and civil policy. To " root out Puri-
tanism and the favourers thereof," was the undisguised
aim of her Majesty and the primate.
j_J^ The powers of a great intellect working in the rec-
tory of Boscum, in the diocese of Sarum, were of more
weight in the struggle than all the vigilance of Whit-
gift, backed by the authority of the High Court of
Commission. Here Hooker was quietly preparing
his great work, which deserves to mark the next and
final stage of the controversy in the reign of Eliza-
beth. He had retired to Boscum in 1591, after the
contentions of his ministry in the Temple. The seclu-
sion was welcome to one whose nature was essen-
tially tranquil in its loftiness and contemplative
simplicity. He had shown, indeed, that he did not
shrink from the active annoyances of a struggle, the
principles of which he had so deeply pondered. His
* Camden, 288.
INTRODUCTION. 25
ministry in the Temple, if not a popular success, proved
him of a resolute and courageous spirit, capable of
maintaining his own convictions in the face of opposi-
tion and amidst the heats of discussion. Travers had
been conjoined with him here, and to this conjunc-
tion and its consequences may be traced the bent of
Hooker's thoughts to the subject in connection with
which his name has become immortalised.
Travels, after Cartwright, must be reckoned the most
distinguished leader of the Elizabethan Puritans. "Al-
lowing Mr Cartwright for the head," says Fuller, " Mr
Walter Travers might be termed the neck of the Pres-
byterian I3arty, the second in honour and esteem." *
He had been identified since 157-i with a "Plan of
Presbyterian Government," concocted at Geneva, and
especially adapted to the meridian of London. This
plan, revised by Mr Cartwright and other learned
ministers, had passed into popularity, and become
a sort of programme of the Presbyterian policy,
Travers himself stood in high esteem with Lord
Treasurer Burleigh, whose domestic chaplain he was.
He had resided abroad, like most of the active Puri-
tans. He was a man of earnest and fixed convictions,
who cherished his Presbyterianism as the Gospel itself,
• and was ready to submit to any sacrifice in its defence.
Like Cartwright, he was vehement, restless, and im-
pulsive, animated by lofty but narrow principle, and
with that tincture of harsh and rude dogmatism which
distinguishes the religious spirit of the age (save in
such eminent exceptions as Jewell and Hooker). Cart-
wright appears to us, upon the whole, the manlier and
higher character, as he was the more powerful and sys-
tematic reasoner : a stronger, more living, and less
* Book ix. p. 136.
26 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
captious earnestness marks him as a controversialist.
But Travers was evidently more polished and attractive
in the pulpit. He appears, in fact, to have been one of
the most popular preachers of his day.
It was as a preacher that he came in contact with
Hooker. He had been sometime a lecturer in the
Temple, when Hooker was appointed to the mastership.
He was a great favourite with the congregation, many
of whom were deeply imbued with the Puritanical
spirit. In the afternoon, when he preached, crowds
came to hear him, while Hooker's sermon in the fore-
noon was but thinly attended. " The pulpit spoke,"
old Fuller says, " pure Canterbury in the morning,
and Geneva in the afternoon ; " while the congregation
" ebbed " in the former case, and " flowed " in the lat-
ter.* The special dispute between them related to
some changes in the dispensation of the Lord's Supper
that Travers had introduced ; but the two men imper-
sonated the opposing religious principles of their day,
not in one particular only, but in the whole style and
tendency of their thought. The theology of the one is
intensely Calvinistic, with that narrowing polemical
tone which the mere disciples of a great system are apt
to adopt ; that of the other embraces but rises above
* Fuller's portraits of the rival preachers are graphic, if somewhat one-
sided. " Mr Hooker : his voice was low, stature little, gesture none at
all ; standing stone-still in the pulpit, as if the posture of his body were
the emblem of his mind, immovable in his opinions. Where his eye was
left fixed at the beginning, it was found fixed at the end of the sermon :
in a word, the doctrine he delivered had nothing but itself to garnish
it. His style was long and pithy, driving on a whole flock of several
clauses before he came to the close of a sentence ; so that when the
copiousness of his style met not with proportionable capacity in his
auditors, it was unjustly censured for being perplexed, tedious, and ob-
scure. . . . Mr Travers : his utterance was graceful, gesture plausible,
manner profitable, method plain, and his style carried in it indolem
pietaiis, a genius of grace flowing from his sanctified heart."
INTRODUCTION. 27
Calvinism. The one is wedded to tlie Genevan polity,
the other has analysed and estimated the foundations
of all polity in the intimations of the divine mind re-
vealing itself in nature, reason, and Scripture. Travers
no doubt seemed by far the more clever and successful
pulpiteer ; but he was only a controversialist — Hooker
was a philosopher.
The first four books of the ecclesiastical polity ap-
peared in 1594; the fifth some years later, after the
author had removed to Bishopsborne, near Canterbury,
where he died in the last year of the sixteenth century.
It is difficult to estimate the exact effects of these books
upon the course of controversy. But there is reason to
think that they were considerable, and that, after fifty
years' conflict, the agitation somewhat recoiled under
the shock of the lofty and far-reaching argument which
they developed. Of this there can be no doubt, that
they carried the Puritans into a region of discussion
where they had difficulty in following the author, and
where they certainly could not meet him. The Puri-
tan's strong point, as we have seen, was the supposed
warrant of Scripture for his views. Scripture, he urged,
had especially laid down rules for the ordering and
worship of the Church. " Those things only are to be
placed in the Church which the Lord himself in His
Word commandeth," was the fundamental principle
laid down in the "Admonition." Whitgift had so far
met this by saying, that the " substance and matter of
government must indeed be taken out of the Word of
God ; " yet that " the offices in the Church whereby this
government is wrought, are not namely and particularly
expressed in the Scriptures, but in some points left to
the discretion and liberty of the Church, to be disposed
according to the state of times, places, and persons." He
28 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
met tlie assertion of the Puritans by a simple negative —
to wit, that the Scriptures are not the only and absolute
source of ecclesiastical polity, but that there is a cer-
tain discretion and liberty left in the hands of the gov-
ernors of the Church for the time. He did not, how-
ever, see the necessity of any higher principle to meet
and absorb their special doctrine, which, in its defin-
iteness, had a strong affinity for the current theological
temper. He had no spirit of philosophy carrying him
beyond the immediate necessities of the argument to
a larger sphere of moral and political contemplation, in
which the Puritan doctrine should receive at once due
recognition and limitation.
It remained for Hooker to do this in the whole con-
ception of his work Divine rules must be our guide,
was the postulate. Granted, was Hooker's argument,
divine rules must be our guide ; but it does not follow
that there are no divine rules except those revealed in
Scripture. All true laws, on the contrary, are equally
with the rules of Scripture divine, as springing out of
and resting on the same source as those of Scripture —
the eternal divine reason. The supreme mind is the
fountain of all law, whether its revelation be in Scrip-
ture or in nature and life ; and the excellent and bind-
ing character of the law does not depend upon the
special medium of revelation, but on the fact that it is
really a revelation or expression of the highest Order.
The particular rules in dispute, therefore, whether or
not they were expressly contained in Scripture, might
have a clear divine sanction. They might have a
valid authority, both in their substance and direct
origin, in their conformity to reason, and the national
will and position. For divine law might as truly
approve itself in such a conformity as in any mere
INTRODUCTION, 29
verbal imitation of the letter of Scripture. The ques-
tion accordingly came to be not merely what is laid
down in Scripture, but what in all respects is fair and
conformable, "behovefull and beautiful " in itself, in
harmony with the consecrated usages of history, and
the exercise and development of the Christian con-
sciousness in the Church. The ground on which it
must be decided, in short, is not any mere dogmatic
and self-constituted Scriptural interpretation, but the
tfitness and excellence of the thing in all its relations
/ of time and circumstance — the eternally good ground
of Christian expediency against theoretical ecclesiasticism
of any kind.
Of all the theologians of his age. Hooker was the
most unpuritan ; he not only opposed a special church
theory which then sought to dominate in Protestant-
ism, but he showed how every such theory must break
against the great laws of historical induction and
national liberty. He was catholic in judgment and^
feeling, but he wrote not merely on the interests of
Catholicism : it was the rights of reason and of free
and orderly national development in the face of all
preconception, of whatever kind, that he really vin-
dicated. While others merely argued, he reasoned
and philosophised.
The dispute was not destined to rest where Hooker
wished to rest it. The age was not ripe for such
views as he had expounded, even if his party had
seen the right application of them. Their publica-
tion tended in some degree to divert the course of
controversy, and to help the pause in it which marks
the close of Elizabeth's reign. But the controversy
had then also bes^un to slacken of itself. As a mere
30 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
theological polemic, it was wellnigli exhausted, and
men were wearied with its endless iterations on either
side. It might have died out if it had not been that
there were deeper principles at stake than any mere
points of ecclesiastical policy. From the beginning,
the ecclesiastical difficulty had masked the far greater
difficulty of the liberty of the subject ; and it was only
Elizabeth's vigorous and enlightened sense of her posi-
tion, and the consistent pride with which she sought the
national glory in its highest sense, and, notwithstanding
her apparent deference to the ecclesiastical prejudices
of the Catholics, yet maintained herself at the head of
Protestantism in Europe, that enabled her to evade
this latter difficulty. With all the restlessness of the
extreme Protestants during her reign, they yet beheld
in her government their only defence against the re-
actionary plots that were everywhere threatening the
very existence of their faith. She might thwart and
oppress them, but she remained true upon the whole
to the great cause which they prized, and which, but
for her, might have been utterly overthrown in Eng-
land and in Scotland, as it was in France. The poli-
tical difficulty, therefore, did not emerge in Elizabeth's
reign. The Puritans felt that, although oppressed in
conscience, they were not sacrificed to any game of
political intrigue. Elizabeth, in fact, was as Protest-
ant as she could be ; and although they did not recog-
nise this, and their whole conduct indeed protested
against it, yet the fact vaguely impressed itself on the
national conscience, and kept it steady and loyal
amidst all its agitations.
With the accession of the Stuarts a wholly differ-
ent turn was given to the political aspects of the con-
INTRODUCTION. 31
troversy ; wliile its theological spirit also, after a brief
repose, awakened to fresli bitterness, and, on the Angli-
can or Church side, took a new and intensely dogmatic
direction.
It was natural for the Puritans to make advances to
James on his first accession to the throne. A mon-
arch who, in Scotland, had seemed for a while warmly
to identify himself with Presbytery, and who, in his
zeal, had pronounced the Anglican service " an ill-said
mass in English," might well excite hopes in their
breasts. They would have been untrue to their con-
victions if they had not besought his countenance ;
and they met him accordingly on his way to assume
his new dignity with their famous Millenary petition.
The heads of this petition claim our notice, as showing
what were the definite objects of the Puritans after
fifty years' struggle. It was their manifesto at the
opening of the second great stage of the controversy.
It consisted of four heads.
1. Concerning Church Service. — It prayed that the
cross in baptism, the interrogatories to infants, baptism
by women, and confirmation, should be done away ;
that the cap and surplice should not be enforced ; that
examination should precede communion ; that the ring
in marriage should be dispensed with ; that the Lord's-
day should be strictly observed ; that church music
should be moderated and the service abridged ; that
there should be no bowing at the name of Jesus ; and
that none but canonical Scriptures should be read,
2. Concerning Ministers. — It prayed that none but
able men who can preach be appointed ; that non-resi-
dence be forbidden, and the lawfulness of the marriage
of the clergy fully recognised..
3. Concerning Church Livings. — It required that
32 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
bishops abandon all preferment except tlieir bishop-
rics ; that they be not allowed to hold additional liv-
ings in commendam ; that impropriations annexed to
bishoprics and colleges be converted into regular rec-
torial livings ; and that lay impropriations — that is to
say, livings in the possession of laymen to whom they
had been given at the Eeformation — should be charged
with a sixth or seventh part for the support of a
preacher.
4. Concerning Church Discipline. — It required that
excommunication should not be in the name of lay
chancellors, nor for twelve-penny matters, without the
consent of pastors.
With the exception of the first of these heads, which
contains the main points which had been so long con-
troverted, it will be observed how very practical is the
spirit of reform displayed by the Puritans. They had
profited, in some degree, from their hard experience ;
they could not lay aside the old subjects of conten-
tion— the cross in baptism, the ring in marriage, holy
days and church music ; but these are no longer the
sole, or even the chief abuses urged by them. The
lack of preaching, the abuses of Church patronage and
of discipline, occupy a prominent place : and in fix-
ing their attention on such practical and notorious
abuses, while they evaded all allusion to an entire
change of ecclesiastical policy, and shut out of sight
the question of Presbyterianism, they no doubt mor-
ally strengthened their position, and appealed far more
strongly to the common sense and intelligence of the
nation. At no period, in fact, do they, as a party
within the Church, stand higher. It seemed as if, in
the ebb of the polemical bitterness which had so long
raged, they had risen to a truer sense of their position,
INTRODUCTION. 33
and the really urgent necessities of the Church and
country. All this was owing, in a great degree, to
the wisdom, moderation, and thoughtfulness of their
present leader, Dr Eeynolds. Distinguished by pro-
found learning and elevated character — serious with-
out gloom, and zealous without harshness — deeply
convinced, without pedantry, or ambition, or any per-
sonal interest — he stands out as one of the best eccle-
siastical characters of his time ; and, in a crisis which
was most solemn and memorable for the Church of
England, he bears a lofty contrast to most of the
dignitaries which assembled around James. He was
extreme in his Calvinism, and he certainly mistook
the character of the men with whom he had to deal ;
but his calmness and sense never forsook him amidst
all the indignities of the Hampton Court Conference ;
and to one of his suggestions we owe the only valu-
able result to which that Conference led — to wit, the
authorised version of the Scriptures.
It was obvious, from the very first day that the
divines assembled together at Hampton, what part
James was resolved to take. While the archbishop
and bishops went into "the presence-chamber" to
consult with the King, the four representatives of the
Puritans — Dr Eeynolds, Dr Sparks, Mr Knewstubs, and
Mr Chaderton— were left " sitting on a form outside."
A conference thus begun terminated as might have
been expected. James's only interest seemed to be
to exhibit his knowledge of divinity, and to browbeat
the remonstrants as soon as they ventured to make
any suggestions of reform. Even in Barlow's* fawn-
ing account of the Conference, this is obvious ; and it
* Barlow, Dean of Chester, who was one of the seven deans present,
published the Sam and Subxtance of the Conference.
C
34 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
is difficult to say whether tlie insolence of the King
or the servility of the prelates is the more contemp-
tible. As to the power of the Church in things indif-
ferent, his Majesty said "he would not argue, but
answer as kings in Parliament, Le Roy savisera." " I
will have one doctrine," he added, "one discipline,
one religion, in substance and ceremony." And when
Eeynolds at last suggested, in default of any more
extended plan of reform, that the propliesyings, such
as they had been approved of by Archbishop Grindal
and others, should be revived, and the clergy be al-
lowed to meet in provincial constitutions and synods
with the bishops, he kindled into a passion, fancying
they were aiming at a Scotch Presbytery, which, he
said, " agreeth as well with monarchy as God and the
devil. Then Jack and Tom, and Will and Dick,
shall meet, and, at their pleasure, censure me and my
Council, and all our proceedings. Then Will shall
stand up and say, It must be thus : then Dick shall
reply, and say, Nay, marry, but we will have it thus :
here I must once reiterate my former speech, Le Roy
savisera,'' &c.*
It is clear that there was not much to be made of
such a conference. If le Roy saviscra was to settle
everything, the scruples of the Puritans would go for
little ; and accordingly it was soon found that the
royal will was to govern the Church as des]3otically
as ever, and far more insolently. The Hampton Court
* There is a coarse and telling humour iu James's taunts about Pres-
bytery, which, if they were not so utterly unbecoming, might make us
Kmile. He added, in the same vein, " Pray stay one seven years before
vou demand that of me, and if then you find me pursy and fat, and my
windpipe stuffed, I will perhaps hearken to you — for let that govern-
ment be up, and I am sure I shall be kept in breath." There is a tragic
irony in the fearful reply which the Presbyterian Long Parliament
made to this sarcasm of the father in the person of his son.
INTEODUCTION. 35
Conference was followed by the Convocation of 1604,
and the passing of the famous hundred and forty-one
canons, which enforced uniformity under more ri-
gorous penalties than ever. The Puritans beheld all
their burdens bound with a double and galling force
upon their necks.
Bancroft, moreover, was made primate in the same
year, and they well understood the significance of this
fact. Ever since the notorious sermon at Paul's Cross
in 1588 — a sermon, the purport of which James, then
in the heat of his Presbyterian zeal, had protested
against from Scotland — Bancroft was known as the
leader of the extreme Prelatist party. He had an-
nounced, so far back as that year, the new ground
which the controversy was destined to take up on
the Church side. He had struck the chord of a hos-
tile dogmatism, which, however strange in its first
utterance, gradually passed into a general argument
and watchword. Bishops, he maintained, were a dis-
tinct order from priests, and possessed superiority over
them jure divino. Prelacy, in short, was of special
divine appointment. This was a shaft into the ranks
of the Puritans which could scarcely fail to excite
commotion, considering the course which the argument
had hitherto taken.
It was some time, however, before the new dogmat-
ism took root in the ecclesiastical mind, and germinated
into strength and consistency. It scarcely did so dur-
ing the course of Bancroft's own primacy. His archi-
episcopal rule was less distinguished by any intellectual
change in the character of the controversy, than by
its coarse and imperious system of repression. He
himself proved more of an ecclesiastical dictator than
anything else. Persecution was his active weapon.
36 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
In the previous reign there had no doubt been perse-
cution, but there had also been argument — a fair field
of debate, in which the highest intellects of the respec-
tive sides were pitched against one another — by no
means to the disadvantage of the Church. But mere
offence and violence now became the order of the day.
Hundreds of ministers were suspended, and laymen as
well as clergymen imprisoned. A bencher of Gray's
Inn ventured to defend a minister who had petitioned
the House of Commons, and he himself, at Bancroft's
instance, was apprehended and immured in jail for
life. The Puritans suffered, but did not yield, and
their sufferings gradually won them popular sympathy
and respect.
Hitherto they had been only an insubordinate fac-
tion in the Church. They had constituted an active
but by no means a large party in the country. They
were respected for their conscientiousness — they were
influential from their clear convictions and their ener-
getic combination ; but there is no evidence that in
Elizabeth's reign they represented any very general
national feeling. Elizabeth herself and her policy
were more popular than anything else, while the old
Eomanism was still in various districts substantially
the prevailing religion. But it was the natural ten-
dency both of James's civil and ecclesiastical policy, to
invest the Puritan cause with a national and widely
spread interest. The indecision of the one, and the
want of magnanimity in the other, created an increas-
ing sympathy for those who steadfastly upheld the
principles of Protestantism, and were exposed to sacri-
fices for their consistency. Such a sympathy especially
spread among the burgher or citizen class, who had
already begun to incline this way in the previous
INTKODUCTION. 37
reign. Many circumstances contributed to the growth
of this spirit from the very accession of the Stuarts ;
but it was only in the reign of Charles that it reached
its full increase.
The oppression of James's reign drove many of the
more zealous Puritans from the country, first to Hol-
land, and then to the great Western Continent, where
they were destined to plant their faith as the seed of a
new and powerful civilisation. In 1620 the Mayflower
and the Speedwell sailed from Delft Haven, bearing
the first Saxon colonists of America, the Pilgrim
Fathers. Many were disposed to follow their example.
To the Puritan mind, in its stern loyalty to the Bible,
and love of self-government according to its own ideal,
there was something peculiarly fascinating in the
thought of erecting a model state on a distant and un-
explored shore. Had free egress been granted, in this
and the succeeding reign, to the proud spirits that
groaned restlessly under prelatic tyranny at home, it
may be a question whether the dangerous element
would not have been eliminated from the home society,
and the shock of civil war averted. The story of the
eight ships that lay in the Thames, bound for New
England, in the spring of 1638, on board of which
were John Hampden, Oliver Cromwell, and Arthur
Haselrig, may serve at least to suggest the possibility
of such a result.
It was the whole aim of Bancroft's policy, as we
have said, to crush the Puritans. It was inspired by
the spirit of the royal saying, "I wiU make them
conform, or else I will harry them out of the land,
or else do worse." And Clarendon seems to have
believed that, had Bancroft lived, he would have
subdued these unruly spirits, and extinguished that
38 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
fire in England that had been kindled in Geneva ; for
" he understood the Church excellently well, and had
almost rescued it out of the hands of the Calvinian
party."
But it was the fatal destiny of the Stuarts not to
be consistent even in niisgovernment. On Bancroft's
death in 1610, Abbot was appointed to the primacy,
and he. Clarendon adds, " unravelled all that his pre-
decessors had been doing for many years. He con-
sidered the Christian religion no otherwise than as it
abhorred and reviled Popery, and valued those men
most who did that most furiously. He inquired but
little after the strict observation of the discipline of the
Church, or conformity to the articles and canons estab-
lished, and did not think so ill of the Presbyterian dis-
cipline as he ought to have done. His house was a
sanctuary to the most eminent of the factious party,
and he licensed their most pernicious meetings."
Abbot, in fact, was a semi-Puritan, and it is difficult to
understand under what mistake James appointed him
to the office. It is certainly a singular circumstance
in the history of the movement, that it should twice
have received a special impulse from the very quarter
that was designed to check it. As Grindal undid the
work of Parker, so Abbot undid the work of Ban-
croft, or at least both of them acted as far as they could
in the same direction. The primacy was substantially
Puritan in the case of both ; and had they been per-
mitted a free exercise of their functions, it is difficult to
say what might have been the result to the Church of
England. This, liowever, was not permitted to Abbot
any more than to Grindal. Like his predecessor, the
former not only soon lost the royal favour, but sank into
a pitiful and half-disgraceful obscurity, as the uninten-
INTKODUCTION-. 39
tional agent in a mournful disaster. While liunting
in a park of Lord Zoucli's, in Hampsliire, he unwarily
let fly his arrow, and killed the keeper on the spot.
James showed him personal kindness in the circum-
stances ; but the primate, deeply distressed in mind,
withdrew altogether from the Council board, where
before " his advice was but little regarded."
During the ten years, however, that Abbot retained
his place at the head of ecclesiastical affairs, there was
a great relaxation in the system of prelatic oppression
inaugurated by Bancroft. The Puritan was left in
comparative tranquillity. The well-known character
of the primate, as in Grindal's time, served as a con-
scious support to him. He was still left to feel that
he belonged to the Church of England, and to cherish
the hope that it might one day be comformed to his
desires. In any case, while the hand of actual perse-
cution was lifted from him, and his principles not laid
under ban, he was content to cherish them in peace,
and to wait for their triumph.
That triumph was still distant ; and new principles
and shapes of party were in the mean time springing
up in more menacing and formidable opposition than
ever. The spirit which Bancroft had introduced into
the controversy thirty years before, had been silently
taking root and growing up in many minds. It would
be absurd to ascribe too much importance to the memor-
able sermon at Paul's Cross ; but the echo of it long
outlived the preacher, and sentiments in conformity
with it had now begun to characterise a large portion
of the Anglican clergy. A change of spirit was gra-
dually creeping over the Church. The deeper thought-
fulness and manlier sense of the Elizabethan age had
faded away, and given place to a theological intellec-
40 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
tiialism, comparatively pedantic and formal. Andrews
and Donne, Williams and Laud, mark the progress of
this change. These men were sufficiently remarkable
as preachers and as politicians ; but they had lost the
comprehensive grasp of principles, and, above all, the
robust vigour of sentiment and honest earnestness, that
distinguished the theologians of the Eeformation. In
comparison with Hooker, or even Jewell, .they had not
a particle of philosophy. Their theology was a craft
at Avhich they were marvellous adepts ; but it had lost
the relation to life and general thought which marked
that of the previous age. The higher clergy generally
were become more men of system than of thought —
members of an order, rather than leaders of an ad-
vancing spiritual intelligence. It was only natural
for such men, when they found themselves confronted
with a defiant dogmatism like Puritanism, to seek their
safety in the invention and support of an opposite
dogma. Sacerdotalism, accordingly, became the con-
tending watchword with Presbyterianism : the divine
right of the bishop encountered the divine right of the
Presbytery ; an Anglican jus divinum met the Puritan
jus divinum. Episcopacy and ceremonialism were not
merely defensible, but they were stamped with an
hereditary divine sanction. The one was of apostolical
succession, the other was a part of the " beauty of
holiness." The external worship of the Church of
England became in the hands of these men a positive
divine institution, just as the Genevan discipline had
been to the Puritan the handiwork of God — the very
" pattern " of the things shown in the Mount. Ex-
treme, as usual, called forth extreme.
Not only so, but along with this change in the
ecclesiastical aspect of the controversy, a remarkable
INTRODUCTION. 41
and decisive change of doctrinal view was rapidly
proceeding. Calvinism was being abandoned by the
Church, and becoming the exclusive property of the
Puritan. This change had been for some time work-
ing beneath the surface, but it only showed itself
prominent towards the close of James's reign. It is
very signilicant, and lay in the conditions of the agita-
tion from the very beginning. The remarkable thing
is rather that it should have been so long delayed,
than that it should at last have come so quickly and
thoroughly. The Puritan was a Calvinist naturally
and entirely. The well-spring of his peculiar thought
and life — the original of his theology and church —
were in Geneva. The Churchman was Calvinistic, not
so much from conviction or aftinity of sentiment, as
from the mere dominance of a great system over the
theological mind of his time. Calvinism, more or less
definite, became the reigning expression of the religious
thought of the age of the Eeformation and that which
immediately followed. But so soon as the character of
this thought began to change, Calvinism began to lose
its hold, and the very means taken to strengthen its
ascendancy by a natural reaction led to its overthrow.
James had come from Scotland a zealous Calvinist ;
and, even after he had been some time on the throne
of England, he had communicated to the States of
Holland his abhorrence of the doctrines of the succes-
sor of Arminius at Leyden.* The change that was
creeping over other minds, however, had not left the
royal mind unaffected. It was felt and acknowledged
at Court, as elsewhere, that Puritanism and Calvinism
had a natural and essential affinity. The convictions of
the King were waxing comparatively weak under such
* Conrad Vorstius.
42 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADEES.
an experience ; the last remnant of liis Scottish theo-
logical education was beginning to break up. Still the
process was gradual. His mind clung to the old ortho-
doxy, and he sent, when requested, four representatives
to the synod of Dort in 1G18. He expressed himself,
moreover, delighted with the decisions of that famous
synod. The Calvinistic world was everywhere excited
and pleased with so triumphant a result. Notliing
could well have been more summary and successful ;
but, as in many other cases, the very excess of the tri-
umph proved a defeat. The Arminians were rudely
silenced and expelled from the synod ; but the spirit
of free inquiry which, in their circumstances, these
men represented, lived on and took a new start, all the
more surely because of the violent and unreasoning
treatment with which their opinions had been encoun-
tered. The " five points " settled at Dort were debated
over again in many an English parsonage, and in the
halls of Oxford and Cambridge, and not always with
the same result — not nnfrequently with a quite oppo-
site result. Among many of the younger and more
active clergy, a strong doctrinal reaction set in. The
sentiments of Arminius and Episcopius were wel-
comed by them as an availing counterpoise to the Cal-
vinistic opinions so closely identified with Puritanism.
They gladly caught the new " wind of doctrine," and
trimmed their movement to catch its favouring gale.
The president of St John's College, Oxford, was the
representative and chief of this rising party in the
Church. From the time that he had taken his degree
in 1598, he had been known in Oxford as a zealous,
confident, and aspiring person ; fond of management,
and devotedly attached to all the ancient Catholic
usages of the Church. He was of little stature, and
INTRODUCTION, 43
the wits had dubbed him i^cl'^^cc Laus. Small he was,
beyond doubt, in all his convictions and aspirations, his
poor superstitions and scrupulosities ; * a man of weak
but obstinate judgment, of cold though intense feel-
ing, of mean yet tenacious temper, and of narrow yet
indoiuitable persuasions — exactly the man to initi-
ate a fanatical movement in behalf of an established
cause. In this man the new Anglican movement was
impersonated. He tells us that he was one of those
who believed in the " divine apostolical right " of Epis-
copacy ; that his predominant aim as a churchman
was to secure uniformity, " being still of opinion that
unity cannot long continue in the church when uni-
formity is shut out at the church door." The idea of
ceremonial uniformity possessed him, in fact, as a pas-
sion. It was the thought in which he lived ; it was
the cause, we may say, for which he died. The Church,
as a positive institution, divinely prescribed in every
lineament and form ; the sacraments and clergy as
the sole channels of grace ; the dresses and ritual as
the very "beauty of holiness" — these were to Laud no
mere matters of argument, but the very essence of
faith. He saw at once the meaning and value of the
doctrinal change that had begn.n, and set himself at
its head. Although comparatively languid in his own
dogmatic sympathies, it was he who invented the name
of " doctrinal Puritanism " to designate the opposition
to the Church, and led the reaction against Calvinism.
James was at first naturally puzzled by the new
turn which the defenders of the Church were taking:.
* Laud's diary shows abundantly the supei'stitions of the man, his
regard for dreams and omens, and his scrupulous and timid anxieties.
It is a strange picture of the brooding of a narrow yet enthusiastic
nature.
44 ENGLISH rURITANISJI AND ITS LEADERS.
He could not all at once get quit of liis strongly-pro-
nounced Calvinism. Beyond doubt he had a lurking
love for the Genevan dialectics in which he had been
trained, and in which he himself had been no incon-
siderable adept. But he loved power still more than
Calvinism ; and, identifying always more the ecclesias-
tical with the royal prerogative, according to his fam-
ous saying, " No bishop, no king," he soon parted with
any doctrinal scruples he had, and gave the full weight
of his authority to the new prelatic movement. While
the miserable intrigue about the Spanish match was
proceeding — to the great disgust of the old national feel-
ing, which had not forgot its proud resentment against
Spain — and the Puritan party availed themselves of
the state of affairs to inveigh strongly against Popery
and Arminianism, he issued directions to j^'^^^f^chers,
commanding them to abstain from such exciting dis-
cussions. The deep points of election and reprobation,,^
and the universality and irresistibility of divine grace,
were laid under ban, and excluded from the pulpits.
The directions professed to be aimed against both parties
alike, but they chiefly struck at the Calvinistic party.
The pulpit had become the great support of tliis party.
The system of lecturers, which attained its full growth
in the succeeding reign, was rapidly spreading in the
towns. It was greatly patronised by the middle classes,
who could in no other way have their love for preach-
ing gratified ; and to assail the freedom of the pulpit
was really, therefore, to assail one of the most power-
ful influences exerted in favour of Calvinistic and Puri-
tan doctrine.*
* We shall hear more of the lecturers as we proceed. The people de-
lighted in them ; the High Church clergy detested them. Hej-lin speaks
of them as being "neither birds nor beasts, and yet both of them to-
INTRODUCTION. 45
It was not only by sucli means, however, that James
showed his deepening attachment to the semi-Eomish
party that was rising in the Church. Tliis party
aimed, under a totally different feeling from that which
impelled the early reformers, to assimilate the religious
observances of the country to those that had existed
in the old Catholic times. Eegular attendance in the
parish church on Sundays, and the old recreations and
games afterwards, was one of their favourite devices for
this purpose ; and the Book of Sports was the conse-
quence. There was nothing which more deeply offended
the Puritan. It violated at once his profound convic-
tions and his most sacred feelings. The May-pole and
Sunday dance on the village green became a standing
opprobrium to his conscience, as they were a dishonour
to his religion ; and among all his incentives to violent
action, none was stronger than his outraged feeling
against a system identified to him with such desecrat-
ing abominations.
After the accession of Charles in 1625, the great
parties in the Church and country became more defin-
itely and widely opposed to one another. A quarter of
a century's renewed and embittered conflict had left
traces wholly irremovable. James's selfish vanity and
pedantic tyi'annies had thwarted and annoyed the
popular instincts at every point, without doing any-
thing to extinguish them. Beyond doubt, the powers
opposed to Puritanism had lost during this period both
in intellectual and moral strength. The proud earnest-
ness which had distinguished the leading churchmen
gether." " The lecturers," says the more sober Selden, " get a great deal
of money, because thej"- preach the people tame, as a man watches a
hawk, and then they do what they list with them."
46 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
of tlie age of Elizabetli, the national sense and dignity
which they had represented, had passed away ; while
Puritanism itself had gro^ai, from being a mere con-
tentious and unruly element, into a great moral and
political as well as religious cause.
It is impossible to conceive any one more in contrast
with this growing phase of the national life than the
monarch who now succeeded to its guidance. Trained
under the tutorship of Buckingham and Laud, he had
attained to manhood without the slightest notion of
liberty of conscience or liberty of any kind. His reason
was a slave to the dogmas which he had been taught,
and all his feelings and sympathies were enlisted on the
same side. His judgment was narrow, and his will at
once sanguine and perverse. Blameless in personal con-
duct, and of pure and pious affections, all that was good
equally with all that was evil in his nature and educa-
tion, clung to the fabric of the constitution in Church
and State as it had descended to him. He cared not
so much for its principles — for of principles his mind
did not fit him to have any clear conception — but he
admired and worshipped its forms and supposed prero-
gatives. He was, in short, a natural despot, with the
mystic enthusiasm and deep falsehood, without the reso-
lute energy and unscrupulous decision, of the race. He
and Laud suited each other perfectly ; the same dicta-
torial and overbearing policy in conception, the same
earnestness in details, the same love of ceremonies, the
same intensity in trifles, the same suppleness of prin-
ciple and the same rigour of creed, the same mysti-
cism and the same formalism, characterised them.
Their sympathies exactly met, their views coalesced,
and their ambition sought the same channels of grati-
fication. Under their united action, the question
INTRODUCTION. 47
which had so long agitated the country assumed di-
mensions far more serious and startling than had yet
characterised it. It became a question not merely of
ceremonialism and anti-ceremonialism, nor even of
Episcopacy and Presbytery, but of Protestant free-
dom and popular rights against Popery in the Church
and absolutism in the State. The principles of the
prolonged controversy had worked themselves into
this broader and more fundamental opposition. The
ground was taken up for the final conflict approaching
between the parties.
It was the political element at length mingling in
the controversy which carried it to its full height.
Charles I., in his more consistent assertion of despotic
power in the face of an increasing disaffection, was
destined to bind up the opposing forces into a fiercer
and more compact antagonism, and to precipitate
them towards their great outbreak. The gap between
the parties had gone on widening and changing its
attitude, until they fairly confronted .each other in
deadly hostility. It was not so much that any new
claims were advanced on the part of the Crown — pre-
cedents might be found for the most obnoxious exer-
cises of the royal prerogative (although scarcely for the
exact form of them) — but it was that such claims were
no longer tenable in the face of the changes in public
opinion, and the altered relations which the Crown and
Parliament, as the representative of that opinion, now
bore to one another. The absoluteness which was natural
and possible to Elizabeth, which had an excuse in the
comparatively disorganised condition of the national
sentiment, and which rested, beyond doubt, on a great
conservative interest in the State and in the Church —
which, in short, had so much national life in it, and
48 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
was sustained by sucli moral dignity as to enlist in its
support all tlie highest minds of the time — had ceased
to have the same reality and meaning in the hands of
Charles ; while, by its mere continued exercise, it had
rather grown in pretension than abated any of its
severity. It had lost its weight without losing its
sting. The great interests on which it rested had dis-
appeared, while it seemed to stand as insolently erect
as ever. The Tudor spirit had fled from it, while it
showed even an uglier face of tyranny than in the
Tudor age.
The mere continuance of the strife had helped to
aggravate its issue. Constant provocation incensed
the Crown and increased its arbitrariness, while di-
minishing its material and moral strength. The do-
minant party in the Church suffered from the reaction
of their uncontrolled privileges — especially from the
withdrawal of that earnest spiritual life which, natur-
ally inclining to a freer exercise of spiritual rights
than the Church allowed, was absorbed in noncon-
formity. There are many painful evidences of this in
the social history of the time, as preserved in Baxter's
account of his early years, and in Mrs Hutchison's
Memoirs. Under the force of the restraint which was
everywhere laid upon the movements of the religious
life, great laxity of manners had sprung up under the
shelter of the Church — nay, within the bosom of the
Church itself The parochial clergy, who made them-
selves the mere creatures of a State system, showed
not merely a lack of earnestness, but frequently a de-
plorable irreligion and immorality in their conduct.*
The system became still more contemptible in the men
who represented it, than oppressive in the agencies by
* See Sketch of Baxter s Life.
INTRODUCTION. 4Sl
which it was enforced. On the other hand, the re-
ligious and social impulses which were confined and
driven into obscurity gathered strength in their con-
finement. Kept under control, they got hardened
and disciplined instead of extinguished. A wide,
though lurking, popular feeling was gradually awa-
kened, which began not merely to resent the old inter-
ferences with religious freedom, but to oppose itself
constitutionally to the royal prerogative. Eeligious
oppression was recognised as merely one aspect of a
power which was inimical to the national freedom
in all its manifestations. The old spirit of English
independence was aroused, and looked abroad for its
enemies on which to take a deadly vengeance.
It is a striking process of revolution by which a
controversy about vestments passed into a great na-
tional struggle. The progress, the outbreaks, and the
triumph of the contest are all singularly character-
istic. The patience of resentment, and yet the tena-
city of conviction, on the part of the people, gradually
passing in the one case beyond bounds, and, in the
other case, swelling into a mighty and indomitable
principle ; the vacillations and contending fanati-
cisms in tlie Church ; the infatuation and blinded
selfishness of the two Stuart monarchs ; the mingled
heroism and caution of the Parliamentary leaders ; the
disorderly humours which might have proved ruinous,
and the patriotic resistance which might have been
broken or wearied out, had not a great Hero stepped
forward to give unity to the former, and to carry the
latter forward in a splendid career of victory ; the
magnanimous and apparently unselfish advance of
this Hero, till, returning from the bloody glory of his
D
60 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
Irish conquest, other leaders seemed to retire, and
leave him master of the field ; the blended grandeur
and gloom of his usurpation and rule, as they worked
themselves out amid the perplexities of his Parlia-
ments, the discontents of his old friends, the mur-
murs of the army, and the sorrows of his family, and
yet to the glory of his country, and the renown of his
name abroad as well as at home ; all make a picture
— dazzling in colour, yet sober in outline — brilliant
with all the wonder of romance, yet shaded by the
steady and softened light of duty — such as nowhere
else can be paralleled.
It is our intention to sketch a few of the main
figures in this marvellous picture. The great soldier-
figure that stands central and conspicuous over all
in the group — in whom the spirit of the movement
assumed its most heroic mould, and broke forth into
its grandest and most conquering passion ; the proud
poet and scholar whom we discern by his side — a less
conspicuous, but a purer and more unworldly figure,
in whom the same movement reached its height of
moral and intellectual sublimity ; the enthusiastic
theologian, who never wearied in the service of a
cause which yet often filled him with misgivings ; the
poet-preacher, whose experience and dreams illustrate
so vividly its internal conflicts and spiritual aspira-
tions. These are but prominent figures in a crowded
canvass. Many others would find their place along
with them in a history of the time ; but the study of
these may enable us to comprehend, although not in
all its variety and extent, the real meaning and charac-
ter of the movement in which they were engaged.
I.
CROMWELL
CROMWELL.
Op all the representatives of Englisli Puritanism,
Cromwell is the most characteristic and distinguished.
No country but England, no religion but Puritan Pro-
testantism, could have produced such a Hero. In his
life and character he exhibits, more completely than
any other, the various principles moving the popular
heart of England in the reign of Charles I., — the
political instincts, the social impulses, and the moral
and Christian enthusiasms which, after smouldering
as a slow fire for years — breaking out here and there
into uneasy flame, and dying down again — had at
length kindled into a raging heat, penetrating every
home, and lighting up with sympathy or hostility
every hearth in the kingdom. All that was deepest in
the inward life of Puritanism — its spiritual struggles,
its eager gropings after a living truth — and equally all
that was most marked in its outward features — its
gravity, severity, and strange mixture of Jewish-Chris-
tian forms of speech, with the cursory and direct bu-
siness of the day — find in Cromwell their appropri-
ate expression. He is Puritan in spirit, Puritan in
face. The lines of his portrait have all the weighty
unornamental dignity, the bluff uncourtly heroism, the
dreamy and somewhat dull imaginativeness, and the
54 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
depths of devotional passion, which Puritan ambition
in its highest forms recalls. And if Cromwell was
something more than a Puritan — if he rose, in the
strength of his genius and broad worldly vision, as
well as through his active experience of military and
State affairs, to a higher point of view than Puritan-
ism in its special character can be said to have done
— there were also other points of practical virtue, sim-
plicity, and self-denial, in which many will say that
during his later career he fell below it. If we take
him all in all, however, he is certainly its most con-
spicuous, its greatest representative. The shadow of
his greatness falls across the whole course of its his-
tory. Ptising from the midst of its religious influences,
nursed in the bosom of its spiritual earnestness, har-
dened into firmness and self-conscious strength and
triumph in its deadliest conflicts, he at length en-
throned its principles at the head of the three king-
doms, and gave them not only a national but a Euro-
pean sway.
There have been various biograpliies of Cromwell,
from Noble's Memoirs of the Protcctoral House of Crom-
tvell, to Guizot's Life ; but it is not in any of these, even
in the last, that the student will find the best and
most living sources of information. These are to be
found, beyond question, in his own letters and speeches,
as elucidated by Mr Caiiyle in his well-known work."''
* There is none of Mr Carlyle's works better, upon the whole, than
]iis Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromu-ell. There is none certainly
marked by a deeper insight, or a more true and close api^reciation of
fact, with less exaggeration and wantonness of descriptive statement.
Its editorial and fragmentary character admirably suits the author's
genius, which is more successful in broad and vivid effects, and dashes
of portraitvire, than in carefully-drawii outlines and minutely -shaded
sketches of character.
CKOMWELL. 55
Here, as everywhere, tlie man's own words are Ids
best biography. What he really was, what he thought,
what he aimed to do, what he failed to do, how he
lived, and fought, and governed, we can learn more
from meditation on these words than we can in any
other way. We get, if not completely to understand
him, . yet to understand him better than we ever did
before — to gather up the threads of his life into a more
consistent tissue — to see what meaning it had, and
what influence on human history it exercised.
The life of Cromwell naturally falls into three great
divisions. The first extends to the close of what may
be called his private life, or to the outbreak of the
civil war in 1642.; the second runs from tliis period
throughout the whole of his brilliant career as a Pu-
ritan patriot and soldier, a space of twelve years or
so, on to 1654 ; the last comprises the period of his
Protectorate, when he appears as a statesman and
sovereign, a brief space of scarcely four years (1654-
1658). The proportion between these several periods
is remarkable : the long and well-matured discipline
of more than forty silent years of home thought and
common business, through which the Puritan hero
was prepared for his work ; the struggle of twelve ; the
triumph of four. It is well to remember that up to
middle age, the man whom we see finally ruling the
destinies of England, and leading in triumph the in-
terests of Protestantism in Europe, was a quiet farmer
in the fens of Huntingdon. This of itself were suffi-
cient to show that no mere theory of restless pride or
of selfish aggrandisement will gauge his character,
and account for him as an historical phenomenon.
To whatever degree the desire of power may have
56 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
been cherished in him by his remarkable fortunes
and the ever-expanding consciousness of his genius,
he must also have possessed many strongly-marked
features, independently of the ambition which ab-
sorbed the later energies of his career, and drew forth
the imperial pomp and passion of his character.
Cromwell was born in the spring of the last year of
the sixteenth century, at Huntingdon. He was the fifth
child, and the only son that survived, of Eobert Crom-
well, younger son of Sir Henry Cromwell, and brother
of Sir Oliver Cromwell of Hinchinbrook, an excellent
property in the immediate neighbourhood, now be-
longing to the Montague family. It was sold by this
same Sir Oliver, uncle of our hero, to this family.
Sumptuous living, an easy and rejoicing hospitality on
the part of both the father and the son, had reduced
the fortunes of the house, and rendered such a step
necessary. The father, Sir Henry, was called, from
his profuse expenditure, " the Golden Knight," and
Sir Oliver seems to have vied with him in this re-
spect. In 1603, immediately after the accession of
James, he entertained the King and his retinue with
great magnificence at Hinchinbrook. Again, in 1617,
when James was on his way to Scotland, with Dr
Laud in his company, intent on Episcopal innovations
there, he repeated his hospitality, although, on this
second occasion, with diminished splendour ; and soon
afterwards the property passed out of his hands. The
good knight, however, continued to cherish Avarmly
his Eoyalist predilections, even when his nephew had
become the great Parliamentary captain. A fine old
country gentleman he seems to have been, with the
genuine hearty humour of the race. It is a capital
CROMWELL. 57
trait recorded of liim,* that when his eldest son — in
whom the family turn for expenditure was hereditary
— presented a list of his debts, craving for some aid
towards their payment, Sir Oliver answered with a
bland sigh, " I wish they were paid."
On his father's side Cromwell was thus of a gentle
and old family t — of the same stock, in fact, from
which Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, came. This
famous minister of Henry VIII. , as Mr Carlyle has
shown in detail, was nephew to Oliver's great-grand-
father. On his mother's side a far higher but somewhat
more imaginary descent has been claimed for him.
His mother's name was Elizabeth Stuart ; she was
the daughter of William Stuart of the city of Ely, " a
kind of hereditary farmer of the cathedral tithes and
church lands round that city ; " and the story is that
this Stuart family in Ely was an undoubted offshoot of
the royal family of Scotland, having sprung from one
Walter Steward, who had accompanied Prince James
into England, when he was seized and detained by
Henry IV. This scion of the royal blood of Scotland
is supposed to have married advantageously and settled
in England ; and one of his race having been Popish
Prior of Ely, on the dissolution of the monasteries,
was made, in reward for his pliancy of character, the
first Protestant dean, through whom came the mother
of our hero.
Cromwell's father, according to the well-known popu-
lar story, was a brewer. This occupation does not seem
very compatible with his kindred and descent, and
the hero-worshipper is apt to kindle into some indigna-
* Carlyle.
t " I was by birth a gentleman," be himself saj^s. — Speech to Parlia-
nieyit, Sept. 12, 1654. "Geuere nobile atque illustri ortus," says Milton.
58 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADEES
tion at the suggestion. There seems, however, a fair
foundation for the story, though Eoyalist calumny has
touched it with ready exaggerations. Eobert Crom-
well was evidently a farmer of certain lands of his own
lying round Huntingdon. His proper business was to
manage his own estate ; but as his house was conve-
niently situated for the purpose, with the little brook
Hinchin running through its courtyard into the Ouse,
he seems to have combined brewing with agriculture,
under the laudable impulse of gain. Heath's version,
in fact, may not be very far from the truth — viz., that
" the brew-house was managed by Oliver's mother and
father's servants, without any concernment of his
father therein."
Oliver Cromwell's mother was plainly a spirited,
earnest, and industrious woman, who grudged no
labour for the good of her family. When she was left
a widow with six daughters, she gave dowries of the
work of her own hands to five of them, sufficient to
marry them into wealthy and honourable families. To
the last — and she survived to see her son raised to the
highest pinnacle of power — she cherished her simple
tastes and homely sense. She desired that she might be
buried without ceremony in some country churchyard
— a desire, however, with which her son did not comply.
There is a poii:rait of her, Mr Foster says, at Hinchin-
brook, " which, if that were possible, would increase
the interest she inspires, and the respect she claims ;
the mouth so small and sweet, yet full and firm as the
mouth of a hero — the large melancholy eyes — the
light pretty hair — the expression of quiet affectionate-
ness suffused over the face, which is so modestly en-
veloped in a white satin hood — the simple beauty of
the velvet cardinal she wears, and the richness of the
CROMWELL. 59
small jewel that clasps it, seem to present before the
gazer her living and breathing character." *
Cromwell was the only son of his father's family
that survived. Of his numerous sisters we know little
beyond the fact of their marriage. Of his relatives,
however, it may be interesting to know further, that
one of his aunts on the father's side was the mother of
John Hampden, who was therefore full cousin to
Oliver ; and that another cousin, the son of an uncle
Henry, was the famous Oliver St John, the ship-money
lawyer. Cromwell's kindred, therefore, were on all
hands sufficiently notable. He sprang from the gentry
of England ; and if he gave to his family name an un-
dying distinction, it conferred upon him, from the first,
credit and reputation.
Many semi -mythical stories are told of our hero's
childhood and youth. There is probably some grain
of truth preserved in them, with loads of calumny and
falsehood. In some, the element of fact or trait of
character, from which the mythical embellishment has
arisen, can be clearly traced. This is particularly
the case with the singular story told by Noble and
Heath, of his having, during the Christmas revels at
his uncle's house, " besmeared his clothes and hands
with surreverence " (whatever that may particularly
mean), and in this state accosted the master of mis-
rule, and " so grimed him and others upon every
turn," as to create a serious disturbance, and lead to
his being thrown into an adjoining pond, and there
" soused over head and ears." Such a story not inaptly
corresponds with his odd and somewhat coarse turn
for practical jokes in after years ; and probably this
well-known feature of his later character is the simple
* Foster's Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth, voL i. p. 9.
60 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
explanation of the earlier tradition. So of his vision,
in which, when laid down to sleep one day, tired with
his youthful sports, he saw the curtains of his bed with-
drawn by a gigantic figure, which told him that he
should yet be the greatest man in England. Although
soundly flogged by the schoolmaster, at the particular
desire of his father, for entertaining such a piece of
folly, it is said that the dream could not be driven out
of the boy's head, and, according to the testimony of
Clarendon, it passed into a popular tradition regarding
him, " even from the beginning of troubles, and when
he was not in a posture that promised such exalta-
tion." It is even said to have had some weight with
him in his decision to decline the crown, as he remem-
bered that the figure had not mentioned the word hing,
but only that he should be the greatest man in the
kingdom. Such a story can only be considered as an
evidence of the ease with which the popular mind
satisfies itself as to the explanation of great facts,
whose real meaning it never comprehends. The best,
perhaps, of all these stories of Cromwell's boyhood, is
that which relates how he fought with Prince Charles
at Hinchinbrook, when he was there with his father
in 1G04, on his way from Scotland to London. The
tradition is that he gave the Prince a bloody nose —
a circumstance, says Noble, which was looked upon
" as a bad presage to that King when the civil wars
commenced." Even Mr Foster seems struck with so
notable an omen. "The curtain of the future was
surely," he says, " for an instant upraised here." We
may safely say that the story is a good one, and that,
supposing Prince Charles and the youthful Cromwell
did encounter each other, the stalwart " manchild of
the brewer of Huntingdon " was no doubt very likely
CROMWELL. 61
then, as afterwards, to prove victor, and even to leave
the impress of his prowess on the face of his victim.
The young Oliver was sent to the grammar-school
at Huntingdon, at the head of which was a Dr Beard,
remarkable for the severity of his pedagogic discipline.
As a schoolboy he is represented to have been " noto-
rious for robbery of orchards and of dove-houses, steal-
ing the young pigeons, and eating and merchandising of
them." Likely enough the energy of his " rank nature "
found vent in a somewhat riotous indulgence in all
the usual sports and escapades of boyhood; and one
statement we can believe to be literally true — that he
would work as " a very hard student for a week or two,
and then be a truant or otiose for twice as many
months."
From school at Huntingdon, Cromwell went to Cam-
bridge in the end of his seventeenth year (1616), and
was entered as a commoner of Sidney Sussex College.
The same wild reputation follows him here. He made
"no proficiency," says one of the gossips,* " in any kind
of learning ; but then and afterwards sorting himself
with drinking companions and the imder sort of people
(being of a rough and blustering sort of disposition),
he had the name of a royster among most that knew
him." During his short residence at Cambridge, says
another, f " he was more famous for his exercises in the
fields than in the schools (in which he never had the
honour of, because no worth and merit to, a degree),
being one of the chief match-makers and players at
football, cudgels, or any other boisterous sport or
game."
Whatever truth there may be in these descriptions
of his irregularities, it is by no means true that he made
* Sir William Dugdale. f Heath.
62 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
no progress in learning. In after years lie had a fair
knowledge of Latin, which he could only have acquired
at this time. During his Protectorate he conversed with
the Hague ambassadors in Latin;* and Waller, his
kinsman, reports that he was well versed in Greek and
Eoman history. His Avas not, indeed, in any sense, a
scholarly nature ; but it is a mere aspersion — one of
the thousand that have gathered around his name — to
suppose that he was indifferent or hostile to learning.
The respect which lie showed in the days of his power
to his old Alma Mater, the testimony of Milton and
others, are sufficient to refute any such accusation. Ac-
cording to Milton, " he gathered up the literary dust
of Cambridge without deepening the tracks of learning.
He acquired an ordinary acquaintance with literature
without being in any sense learned." He had other
work to do than that of the schools. With a soaring
loftiness, according to his wont, the poet-secretary
continues the idea : " It did not become that hand to
wax soft in literary ease which was to be inured to
the use of arms, and hardened with asperity; that
right hand to be wrapt up in down among the noc-
turnal birds of Athens, by which thunderbolts were
soon after to be hurled among the eagles which emu-
late the sun."
Cromwell had scarcely been more than a year at
Cambridge when his father died, and he returned home
in consequence. So far as we can judge, this event
terminated his scholastic education. The circum-
stances of his mother — the large charge with which she
was left — the loss of her father in the same year — and
an alienation which had existed for some time between
Sir Oliver's family and her ow^n — j^robably prevented
* Only ''very vitiously and scantily," according to Burnet's sneer.
CROMWELL. 63
Oliver continuing liis studies. He proceeded soon
after to London, to commence the study of law. He is
stated to have entered as a member of Lincoln's Inn,
although research has failed to discover his name in
the books of any of the Inns of Court.
During this period his youthful excesses are reported
to have reached their height. The gossips * vie Avith one
another in " strongly-coloured " stories of his wildness
and debaucheries. It is impossible to say what amount
of truth there may be in such stories. Mr Carlyle makes
short work with them, but the uniformity of the tradi-
tion woukl seem to imply some substratum of truth.
Wickedly coloured they no doubt are — embellished
by all the piquant inventiveness of the slander of the
Eestoration — yet we " can well believe that the youth
of Cromwell was one of stormy and passionate excite-
ment. A nature like his is apt to give the rein to its
impulses, till some special influence or event comes to
arrest and turn it in a new direction.
Such a change in his life was now at hand. While
in London he had become acquainted with the family
of Sir James Bourcliier, " a civic gentleman " of good
means and considerable property near Felsted in Essex ;
* Heath, Anthony Wood, and almost " every contemporaneous re-
cord," says Mr F'oster, " combine to give a strongly-coloured picture of
his uncontrouled debaucheries at this time." One extract will suffice.
"The ale-wives of Huntingdon and other places, when they saw him a-
coming, would nse to cry out to one another, ' Here comes young Crom-
well, shut up your dores,' for he made no punctilio to invite his roysters
to a barrel of drink, and give it them at the charge of his host ; and in
satisfaction thereof either beat him or break his windows, if he offered
any show, or gave any look or sign of refusal or discontent." There is a
worse story than any mere personal debauchery, which represents him
as attempting to obtain possession of his uncle. Sir Thomas Steward's
property, on some plea of his uncle's imbecility ; — but the calumny has
obviously originated in a misinterpretation of some family disagreement.
64 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
and on the 22d of August 1620, when he was twenty-
one years and four months old, Oliver Cromwell was
married to Elizabeth, daughter of this gentleman, in
the Church of St Giles, Cripplegate, London. Eliza-
beth Bourchier is not said to have been possessed of
any remarkable personal attractions. She is not much
spoken of, indeed at all, in his letters or elsewhere.
Several letters, indeed, of his to her survive, written
during his Scottish campaign, and one of hers to him,
belonging to the same period ; but they are brief and
not particularly characteristic. The impression they
give of her is that of a strongly affectionate and sensible
woman, but somewhat narrow-minded and exacting *
— more intent on her family cares than on the great
concerns in which her husband was acting a part. One
has said — and the description seems to suit her very
well — that she was " an excellent housewife, and as
capable of descending to the kitchen as she was of
acting in her exalted station with dignity."
After his marriage Cromwell settled in his father's
residence at Huntingdon, and during the next eight
years we scarcely know anything of his history. He
appears to have farmed, as his father had done before
him, and spent his life in the usual manner of a
country gentleman. His own means must have been
* She says in the single letter of hers which survives (which, by the
way, is extremely wretched in its spelling), almost querulously, " I
should rejoice to hear yoiu- desire in seeing me — but I desire to submit to
the providence of God." But she says also beautifully, and with a touch-
ing strength of affection — "My life is but half a life in your absence, did
not the Lord make it uj) in himself." In one of his replies, Sept. 1650, he
says, characteristically, " I have not leisure to write much. But I could
chide thee that in many of thy letters thou writest to me that I should
not be unmindful of thee and thy little ones. Truly, if I love thee not
too well, I think I err not on the other hand much. Thou art dearer to
me than any creature — let that suffice."
CROMWELL. 65
limited, and his duties probably left liim but little
leisure. He liad leisure, however, to think ; for it
was during these years, and there is reason to suppose
not long after his marriage, that the great religious
change passed upon him which coloured his whole
life, and, more than anything else, gave consistency
and meaning to it. How this change was wrought
there remains no means of tracing. There is no record
of his spiritual experience at this early period ; and
we cannot even say whether Sir Philip Warwick's
reminiscences of his illness and hypochondria* refer to
this or a later time of his life. At the best, these are
but vague signs of the great crisis of his spiritual
being, whose secret intensity can only be gathered
from the fulness of feeling and energy of action which
it called forth.
He soon showed the bent of his new impulses.
Eeligious life and earnestness appeared to him all to
lie with the persecuted Nonconforming party in the
Church. Whether or not any of them had been instru-
mental in leading him to new thoughts, his sympathies
at once gathered round them. His house became a
refuge of the Puritan preachers ; they met in it for wor-
ship, in which he not only joined, but actively parti-
cipated. He became known as one of the most active
of the party, and identified himself with all their move-
ments, appearing personally in their behalf before the
Bishop of Lincoln.-f- From being an idle and boisterous
youth, he became in a few years a zealous, religious,
leader.
* Dr Simcott, physician, Huntingdon, told Sir Philip that Cromwell
was very " splenetic " about this time — that he had been sent for at mid-
night to see him — that he laboured under the impression he was just
about to die — and had " strange fancies about the town-cross."
t Afterwards Archbishop Williams.
E
G6 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADEES.
We can well understand, altliougli we are not able
clearly to trace how all this occurred to Cromwell.
As soon as he began to seek a sphere of activity in
connection with his new convictions, his great energy,
and quick sympathies with the common social feeling
around him, would naturally drive him into the ranks
of Puritanism. Without frivolity, earnest and tho-
rough-going even in his dissipations, with no reverence
for conventionalities, but rather a fierce impatience of
them, the Court or ecclesiastical party possessed no
points of attraction to him. The only feeling that
might have bound him to it — the old traditionary
loyalty of his family, which had cost his uncle and
grandfather so dear — had become weakened by various
circumstances, even if its natural influence had not
been broken by his disagreement with his uncle.
Eoyalism had lost its old charm ; it had widely
alienated the national feeling. Spanish intrigues and
Laudian ceremonialism had made it especially con-
temptible with ardent reforming young minds. Puri-
tanism became, by mere force of contrast, the in-
stinctive creed of such minds between the years
1620-30. To one like Cromwell, with a vague, un-
easy sense of genius, and a profound feeling of the
reality of religion stirring him, it opened up a field
of active interest and ambition. Every one of its
objects made a claim upon his sympathy and enthu-
siasm. The privilege of preaching the gospel with as
few formalities as possible — the right to a private
judgment in matters of conscience — the need of de-
fence against the old Papal spirit of bondage over
men's souls and bodies — these were things directly
calculated to interest a young Protestant gentleman
in the beginning of the seventeenth century. We can-
CROMWELL. 67
not tell when the great principle of the rights of con-
science first impressed Cromwell ; hut we shall see how
early he was excited about Popery, and every attempt
to reintroduce it ; and liow at last, in the days of his
power, it was perhaps his highest honour to reach
the right meaning of the doctrine of toleration, and
nobly to vindicate it against the straitest sect of that
very Puritanism which had first 2)ractically taught
him it.
During these early years of his residence at Hunt-
ingdon, six children were born unto him, four of whom
were sons, but only two of whom* survived, and after-
wards reappear in history. With this family growing
up around him, and amidst his farming duties, and
Puritan interests and associations, he spent this quiet-
est period of his life. Gradually he rose to repute and
credit among his fellow-townsmen. Particularly he
seems to have concerned himself in the scheme at this
time set agoing by some of the wealthy London Puri-
tans for buying-in lay impropriations as they were
offered for sale, and from such funds providing lec-
turers to supply the spiritual destitution prevailing
in many parts of the country. This was a favourite
scheme of the Puritans ; and these lecturers, we have
seen, were their favourite preachers. "It is incred-
ible," says Fuller, "what large sums were advanced in
a short time towards so laudable an employment."
Lecturers spread themselves over the country, espe-
cially in the market-towns, where they preached on
market-days and on Sunday afternoons ; and we shall
find immediately how great was Cromwell's interest
in their maintenance and work.
* Another son (five in all), and two more daughters, of whom we shall
afterwards hear, constituted his family.
68 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
His activity and talent were already, in 1625, so
well recognised, that it was proposed in that year,
when Charles called together his second Parliament,
to send him up to Westminster as member for the
borough of Huntingdon. The proposal, however, did
not on this occasion take effect. In 1628, when
Charles, needy for supplies, and unable to find them
by other and less constitutional means, called together
his third Parliament — the famous Assembly that drew
up and passed the Petition of Right — Cromwell was
returned as member for Huntingdon. His cousin
Hampden was member of this Parliament, and other
names no less celebrated — Selden, Elliot, Pym, and
Holies. Long afterwards, when the rustic squire from
Huntingdon had become the greatest man in England, it
was remembered what a rough and clownish appearance
he presented at this time ; and in the mad days of the
Restoration the subject suggested itself to a divine,
whose cleverness scarcely redeems the infamy of his
sycophancy, as a telling point for a royal sermon. "Who
that had beheld such a bankrupt beggarly fellow as
Cromwell," says South, preaching before Charles II.,
" first entering the Parliament House with a threadbare
torn coat and a greasy hat, and perhaps neither of them
paid for, could have suspected that in the course of
so few years he should, by the murder of one king,
and the banishment of another, ascend the throne, be
invested in the royal robes, and want nothing of the
state of a king, but the changing of his hat into a
crown ! " *
The first session of this Parliament did not last long,
* South was not yet bishop, but only chaplain to Buckingham when
he thus preached before his royal patron, " Odds fish, Lory," exclaimed
Charles, after the sermon, ''your chaplain must be a bishop. Put me
in mind of him at the next vacancy."
CROMWELL. 69
but it had been distinguished by various important
movements. Among other things that it had taken in
hand, was tlie severe exposure of certain Popish
practices on the part of Mainwaring, one of tlie royal
chaplains. Pym led the way in this exposure ; and the
chaplain, abandoned for the time by his master and
Laud, had to submit to the censure of the House. The
royal favour, however, was speedily extended to him
in compensation. No sooner had Parliament risen than
he was promoted. Other circumstances of ill omen had
occurred. " Tonnage and poundage " had been levied
unwarrantably without Parliamentary consent, and in
the very face of the provisions of the Petition of Eight ;
this great remonstrance itself was reported to have
been tampered with. Parliament reassembled in the
January of the following year, not in the very best of
tempers it may be imagined. A committee of religion
was immediately appointed, and a hot and indignant
debate ensued as to the Romanising tendencies dis-
played in high quarters. Hampden had spoken, and
when he sat down his cousin for the first time rose
and addressed the house. " A harsh and broken voice
of astonishing fervour," * made a strange contrast to
the mild and dignified accents of Hampden. But
energy is stamped on every word of the broken and
fragmentary record of this first sj)eech of CromwelL
The direction which his sympathies had been taking
— his association with Puritan lecturers, the impa-
tience of his stern Protestant feeling, are all apparent.
He said " he had heard by relation, from one Dr Beard
(his old schoolmaster at Huntingdon), that Dr Ala-
baster had preached flat Popery at Paul's Cross ; and
that tlie Bishop of Winchester (Dr Neile), he had com-
* Foster.
70 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADEES.
manded him as his diocesan he should preach nothing
to the contrary. Mainwaring, so justly censured in the
House for his sermons, was, by the same bishop's means,
transferred to a rich living. If these are the steps to
church preferment," added he, " what are we to ex-
pect ? " Cromwell's statement so impressed the House,
that it resolved on immediate action. In the Com-
mons' Journals of the same day, there stands recorded
the following notice : " Upon question ordered. Dr
Beard of Huntingdon to be written to by Mr Speaker,
to come up and testify against the bishop : the order
for Dr Beard to be delivered to Mr Cromwell." *
The Protestant temper of the House was not to be
restrained. The King, by the help of the Speaker, tried
to evade its determinations. When it came to the
point, Mr Speaker Finch refused repeatedly to "put
the question," alleging that he had the King's orders to
adjourn. But at length, after an astonishing scene, in
which the Speaker gave way to tears, while the members
around menaced him if he persisted in opposing the
mind of the assembly, he was forcibly detained in
his chair until they had passed three emphatic resolu-
tions protesting against " Arminianism, Papistry, and
illegal tonnage and poundage." Dissolution, of course,
immediately followed these proceedings ; and Crom-
well, after a brief Parliamentary experience, returned
to his native Huntingdon, to remain still for some years
in comparative obscurity. There can be no doubt,
however, that from this time he became a man of mark
in his party. Far more, jDrobably, than we can now
guess, he had shown during this short period of public
life, powers fitted to raise him to influence and distinc-
tion ; while, at the same time, he had entered into
* Carlyle.
CKOMWELL. 71
connection with the great national leaders of the move-
ment. He was no longer merely the head of a pro-
vincial party, hut one of a patriot band, representing a
powerful national feeling. In communion with such
men, he must have felt his sympathies elevated, and
his convictions enlightened and strengthened.
Cromwell returned to Huntingdon in the spring of
1629. In the course of the following year he was named
along with his old schoolmaster, and Eohert Barnard,
Esq., a Justice of the Peace for that borough. Here he
remained for three years or so, still carrying on, appa-
rently in connection with his mother, his old farming
operations. He seems, however, to have been but ill
at ease — troubled with dark thoughts as to his own
spiritual condition and the state of the country. It
is to this period that Mr Forster refers his " strange
fancies about the town-cross," and his hypochondriacal
apprehensions of death. It can be easily imagined
how his strong nature, having been caUed forth into
temporary excitement by the events of the Parliament
of 1G28, and having sunk back into an uneasy and tor-
menting inaction, w^ould prey upon itself.
In 1631 he effected the sale of the properties in
which he was interested in the neighbourhood of Hunt-
ingdon, and removed to St Ives, five miles down the
river, where he rented a grazing farm. His mother
appears to have remained at Huntingdon, as we find
that his children continued to be baptised in the old
church there. At St Ives he became still more dis-
tinguished than hitherto for his systematic and rigor-
ous devotions, and for the religious influence which he
sought to exercise over those around him. He prayed
with his family and servants in the morning and even-
ing. He souglit to mix up religion with the work of
72 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
the fields, just as afterwards he mixed it up with the
work of iigliting. The spirit which inspired and
fashioned his famous Ironsides out of ploughmen and
graziers, was now working in him. He continued also,
with increasing heartiness, his old concern in the Puri-
tan lecturers sustained by the rich merchants of Lon-
don. These lecturers had been greatly persecuted dur-
ing the years succeeding the dissolution of Parliament.
Laud and his accomplices had hunted them down
wherever they could, and discouraged and broken up
the system as far as in their power. St Ives appears
to have been fortunate in possessing for its lecturer, up
to the year 1635, one Dr Wells, "a man of goodness,
and industry, and ability to do good in every way, not
short of any man of England," says Oliver, in his first
extant letter. This letter is in every way remarkable.
It is addressed " to my very loving friend Mr Storie,
at the sign of the Dog in the Eoyal Exchange,
London ;" and after congratulating Mr Storie and his
fellow-citizens on their good works in " providing for
the feeding of souls," by means of the lectures which
they had instituted in the county — and speaking of the
excellence of Dr Wells, who had been so acceptable in
his calling, and since whose coming the Lord had
wrought by him much good among them — it proceeds
to regret the likelihood of the lectures' discontinuance
for want of funds. " And surely," he urges, " it were
a piteous thing to see a lecture fall in the hands of
so many able and godly men, as I am persuaded the
founders of this are, in these times wherein we see they
are suppressed, with too much haste and violence, by
the enemies of God's truth. Far be it, that so mu<3h
guilt should stick to your hands, who live in a city so
renowned for the clear shining light of the gospel.
CROMWELL. 73
You know, Mr Storie, to withdraw the pay is to let
fall the lecture — for who goeth to warfare at his own
cost ?" — a very characteristic hint — the clear light of
common sense (as always with him) shining through
the most fervid expressions of religious feeling.
Amidst all his religious exercises, Oliver's farming
was not prosperous. The lands seem to have been of
a boggy, intractable character, yielding no return for
his patient industry. It is the sneer of Hume, copy-
ing Heatli as usual, that " the long prayers which
he said to his family in the evening, and again in the
afternoon, consumed his own time and that of his
ploughman," and left no leisure for the care of his
temporal affairs. No man was ever less likely than
Cromwell to commit such a mistake. He had now,
and always, far too practical an eye for such maunder-
ing. Yet, whatever was the cause, he did not succeed
at St Ives. His crops failed, and his health became
disordered. The cold and damp of the district affected
his throat, producing a kind of chronic inflammation in
it. It was remembered long afterwards what a strange
appearance he used to make at church, as he came up
the aisle — his throat rolled in flannel, his rough dress
ill-arranged — and the red flannel flaunting after him.
In 1636 he is found no longer at St Ives, but at Ely.
Here he had succeeded to his maternal uncle. Sir Thomas
Steward, who, as his fathers before him, had farmed the
cathedral tithes. He took up his residence in the old
glebe-house near St Mary churchyard — a house still
standing, and described by Mr Carlyle in 1845 as an ale-
house, with still some chance of standing ; " by no means
a sumptuous mansion," he adds, "but it may have con-
veniently held a man of three or four hundred a-year,
with his family, in those simple times. Some quaint
74 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
air of gentility still looks tlirougii its ragged dilapida-
tion." Here Cromwell spent the few remaining years
of comparative inaction that still awaited him, " living
neither in any considerable height nor yet in obscurity,"
as he told his Parliament of 1654.
The state of the country was in those years rapidly
getting worse. Charles had nearly played out his scheme
of self-government. The trial of Hampden, protracted
for months, served to feed the popular discontent. The
quiet magnanimity of the victim, the eloquence of his
defence, the legality as well as righteousness of his
cause, all served to stimulate the public ardour, and
strengthen the rising feeling against the ministers and
the Court. The bishops, too, were carrying their short-
lived triumph to its most oppressive and insolent
excesses. Old Palace Yard, on the 30th of June 1 637,
presented a spectacle calculated to move men's hearts
— not to submission, .nor even to despair, but to fierce
impatience and rooted vengeance rather. Prymie, and
Bastwick, and Burton — a lawyer, physician, and clergy-
man— were there exhibited in three pillories, and had
their ears cut off and their cheeks branded before
a large crowd. This was what Laud's ingenious
ecclesiastical devices had come to. These men had
ventured to question not only the policy but the legality
of these devices. Prynne had openly declared that he
was prepared to prove them to be contrary to the law
of England. This was the answer he and the rest
received. Legal or not, they were to be enforced at
the expense of the ears of all gainsayers. The threat
was a vain one. " Cut me, tear me," cried Prynne, " I
fear thee not — I fear the fire of hell, not thee ;" while
Bastwick's wife, at the foot of the scaffold, received her
husband's ears into her lap and kissed them.
CROMWELL. 75
This very same year, and only a montli later, scenes
equally remarkable in their wayAvere transacted in Scot-
land. • Jenny Geddes with her stool and ever-memor-
able cry, " Deil colic the wame of thee, thou foul
thief, wilt thou say mass at my lug ? " had made in old
St Giles's a " beginning of the end." The fierceness of
national indignation was rising high. It was getting
"too hot to last." *
As Cromwell in his Ely home mused on such
matters, his heart was deeply stirred in him. He was
wrapped now, according to his Avont, in deep gloom,
and now excited to violent energy. His thoughts were
driven inwards, and lie anxiously pondered anew
whether the ground of the matter was right in him.
A letter of this period to his cousin, Mrs St John, the
second in Mr Carlyle's list, is among the most cha-
racteristic of all his compositions that have been pre-
served. Amidst its wild and gropiug earnestness, and
strange intensity of biblical language, it sheds a vivid
light upon the inward man. A strongly-moved and
earnest soul makes itself bare to us, just as it emerges
from darkness and struQ'oie. He writes : " Dear cousin
— I thankfully acknowledge your love in your kind
remembrance of me upon this opportunity. Alas ! you
do too highly prize my lines and my company. I may
be ashamed to own your expressions, considering how
unprofitable I am, and the mean improvement of my
talent ; yet to honour my God, by declaring what he
hath done for my soul, in this I am confident, and will
be so. Truly then, this I find, that He giveth springs
in a dry barren wilderness, where no water is. I live,
you know where — in Mesech, which they say signifies
* Burton's sayinjj, as he was carried fainting from the scene of his
torture.
76 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
'prolonging — in Kedar, which signifies hlackness : yet
the Lord forsaketh me not. Though He do prolong,
yet He will, I trust, bring me to His tabernacle, to His
resting-place. My soul is with the congregation of the
first-born : my body rests in hope : and if here I may
honour my God by doing or by suffering, I shall be
most glad. Truly, no poor creature hath more cause
to put himself forth in the cause of his God than I. I
have had plentiful wages beforehand, and I am sure I
shall never earn the least mite. The Lord accept me
as his son, and give me to walk in the light — and give
us to walk in the light, as He is the light. He it is
that enlighteneth our blackness, our darkness. I dare
not say He hideth his face from me : He giveth me to
see light in His light. One beam in a dark place hath
exceeding much refreshment in it. Blessed be His
name for shining upon so dark a heart as mine. You
know what my manner of life hath been. Oh ! I lived
in, and loved darkness, and hated light ; I was a
chief, the chief of sinners. This is true : I hated god-
liness, yet God had mercy on me. 0 the riches of his
mercy ! praise them for me. Pray for me, that He who
hath begun a good work would perfect it in the day
of Christ." *
An air of singular reality, confused but vivid, is
impressed upon every line of this letter — a reality not
suggested by the scriptural language in which it is
expressed, but which looks through all the conventional
phrases of that language. It is a poor, nay, it is an
unintelligible criticism, which can see nothing but
hypocrisy in such a letter. It ought to be remembered
that, on any other supposition than that of the down-
right and awful sincerity of the writer, much more
* Carltle, 141-2.
CROMWELL. 77
than hypocrisy is needed to explain it in the circum-
stances— addressed as it was to his cousin, and meant
for her eye alone ; we must suppose weakness and
folly as well, of which not even a royalist theologian
would venture to accuse Cromwell.
This is one side of the picture which our hero pre-
sents to ns in these years — an earnest man concerned
about his soul, and rejoicing that the light of Christ has
dawned upon him. There is another side to the picture,
in which we see him no less earnest, in a different
capacity, as a leader of the popular feeling in a great
movement which made much noise at the time in
Huntingdon and its neighbourhood. The Earl of Bed-
ford had some years before started a scheme for the
draining of the extensive fens which covered some mil-
lions of acres in that and the adjoining counties — a pro-
ject long talked of. The work had proceeded so far.
The great Bedford level, as it was called, for carrying
the river Ouse between elevated embankments into the
sea, had been completed, or nearly so ; when the Crown,
by commissioners, interfered with the professed design
of abetting the work, but in such a manner as to stir
up a tierce strife in all others interested. Its spirit of
encroachment here, as everywhere, was so obviously
manifested as to provoke opposition on all hands.
Oliver Cromwell threw himself heart and soul into
the movement, headed the widespread disaffection,
and by a " great meeting " at Huntingdon, and other-
wise, effectually put a stop to the invasions of the
Crown, and for the time defeated the completion of
the great project. He was far, however, from being
opposed to it in itself, and it is absurd to represent
the matter as if he were so.* It was merely his
* So far from this, that when, in the year 1649, the Long Parliament
78 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
instinct liere, as elsewhere, to resist the domineering
spirit of the Crown in defence of popular rights and pri-
vileges. The notoriety he acquired in this commotion
procured him among the people the appellation of the
" Lord of the Fens." The great energy and decision
of his character were quietly noted, and it was felt that
he would make himself known in the times that were
approaching. It was remarked that he was a man
" that would set well at the mark."
Times sufficiently stirring were at hand. The at-
tempt to re-establish Episcopacy in Scotland had
produced its natural fruits. The famous Glasgow
Assembly had demolished the elaborate machinery
devised by Laud and his coadjutors. Charles resolved
to send an army into Scotland to enforce his designs ;
and the long-forgotten idea of a Parliament was once
more pressed upon him as the only mode of enabling
him to meet his difficulties and equip his army. A
Parliament was accordingly summoned in the spring
of 1640 ; Cromwell was appointed to sit in it as
member for Cambridge ; but it had scarcely met when
it was dismissed. The royal temper was still intract-
able ; and a last desperate effort, to which Wentworth,
now Earl of Strafford, gave all his influence, and con-
tributed himself the large sum of £20,000, was made
to raise and send forth an army without Parliamentary
intervention. The attempt, however, was disastrously
unsuccessful. The soldiers were ill-affected towards
the cause of Episcopacy : "in various towns on their
march, if the clergymen were reported Puritan, they
went and gave them three cheers ; if of surplice ten-
dency, they sometimes threw his furniture out of win-
passed an Act for ''draining the great level of the fens," Lieutenant-
General Cromwell was among its most active supporters.
CROMWELL. 79
dow." * Sucli an army was obviously not likely to
set up the power of the bishops. Tlie Scottish force
in the mean time penetrated England, and forcing its
way toward Newcastle, the King's army retired upon
Yoik, where he and Strafford were.
The war was virtually ended ; and Charles returned
to his capital baffled and gloomy at the result. Sum-
moning hastily a " Council of Peers," he concluded a
treaty with the Scots, and was compelled once more to
think of calling together a Parliament. Twelve of the
Peers petitioned him to do so. The city of London
would only advance money on condition that he would
do so. The Scots remained at Newcastle comfortably
quartered, and encouraging by its sympathy the Puritan
disaffection everywhere. Charles was in straits such as
he had never yet been ; and reluctantly he yielded and
summoned the Commons. This, known as the Lous
Parliament, was the most memorable that ever sat in
England. It met on the ^/arc? of November 1640. The
long-suppressed feelings of tlie country at length found
vent in a persistent course of reform. Bill followed
bill in rapid redress of grievances under which the
Commons had long groaned. Ship-money was de-
clared to be illegal ; the Star Cliamber and the High
Court of Commission were abolished ; the power of
arbitrary taxation was taken from the King, and the
bill for triennial Parliaments passed. Laud was im-
peached, and imprisoned in the tower ; Strafford was
struck down from his proud and oppressive elevation.
Never was monarch more hopelessly embarrassed
— more violently and yet feebly inconsistent — than
Charles. At one time he tried a compromise with the
popular party ; then he entered into plots with the
* Carlyle.
80 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
army for the rescue of Strafford from the Tower ; then,
finally, he abandoned him, and signed his condemna-
tion on the 10th of May 1641.
After the death of Strafford a temporary reaction
set in. The secession of Hyde and Culpeper and Falk-
land from the popular party, served for a while to
weaken it, and strengthen the side of the King. Many
as well as these known names were disposed to think
that the royal concessions had proceeded far enough ;
that the rights of the constitution had been amply
vindicated ; and that the course of innovation should
be stayed. They felt that the country was trembling
on the brink of revolution ; and that a further step in
advance, still more a step of violence on either side,
would precipitate matters towards a crisis which must
issue in a civil war. They shrunk from the fearful
responsibility of such an issue. That this was the
honest motive of such a man as Falkland in joining
the King there can be no doubt. Personal peculiarities
in him, as well as in Hyde, may have had something
to do with the result ; his keen and sensitive nature,
delicate and classic in its aspirations, may have oper-
ated, just as Hyde's reserved dignity and coldness did,
in withdrawing him from the cause of popular agita-
tion. But it is clear, also, that the genuine principles
of both were implicated in making the stand they did.
They had been foremost in urging on the "Bill of
Attainder," for they hated Straftbrd even more than
Pym and Hampden ; but in his overthrow they seemed
to see the security of the constitution ; and they gave
themselves to the service of the King with a sincere
desire to maintain the integrity of the Government,
and avert the revolutionary dangers which seemed
threatening.
CROMWELL. 81
But tliey mistook — even Hyde did — the character
of the King, and they underrated the daring and
address of the leaders of the popular cause. Following
Strafford's execution, the King had gone to Scotland ;
and there, in the midst of many intrigues, and in con-
tact with tlie ardent courage of Montrose,* he had re-
covered not only his spirits, but his old ideas of prero-
gative and kingly power. He returned, inflamed with
his own importance, and a sense of his outraged rights,
and threw himself far more heartily into the counsels
of the Queen and her secret Popish conclave, than into
the deliberations of liis new supporters.
In the mean time Pym had taken a step which re-
opened the whole subject of popular grievances, and
struck a deadly blow at the new policy of conciliation.
He had prepared and was urging forward " The Grand
Eemonstrance." Whatever be the explanation of this
move of the ParUamentary leaders — whether it pro-
ceeded from their honest convictions that the process
of reform was not by any means complete — from their
fears, or their ambition — it had the effect of giving a
new and decisive turn to the struggle. Their victory
made them more confident, and the King more des-
perate. The remonstrance was carried by a majority of
eleven, on the 22d of November, after a long debate and
a memorable scene, which, save for the firmness and pre-
sence of mind of Hampden, might have ended in blood-
shed. It was on leaving the house after this exciting
struggle that Cromwell is reported to have said to
Falkland, that if the remonstrance had not been carried.
* It is doubtful whether Montrose had any personal intercourse with
the King, although Clarendon alleges that he had. "He" (Montrose),
he says, "came privately to the King." There can be no doubt, how-
ever, that communications passed between them.
F
82 PINGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
lie would have sold all that lie liad next day and gone
off to America.
Other events followed in rapid succession. The long-
pending attack against the bishops was unexpectedly
brought to a violent issue. Through the folly of Wil-
liams, the thirteen who had been impeached were
arrested, and eleven of them carried to the Tower,
to bear Laud company. Charles, at the same time,
intoxicated by his flattering reception in the city by
a Eoyalist Lord Mayor, and seduced by the evil coun-
sels of the Queen and her creatures, was meditatiug
designs of a dark and aggressive character. Selecting
five of the leaders of the Commons and one in the
Lords, he demanded their impeachment and surrender
as traitors ; and when baffled in this milder effort, he
made his appearance in Westminster with an armed
guard to enforce his summons and arrest his victims.
The step was at once impotent and fatal. The mem-
bers, duly warned, had disappeared into the city ; and
Parliament retreated thither also, "to be safe from
armed violence."
The crisis could now no longer be delayed. The King,
with the Queen and his family, left London, while the
five impeached members were transported in triumphal
barges from the city to Westminster. The city militia
lined the banks of the Thames on both sides. Four
thousand knights and gentlemen on horseback arrived
from Buckingham to hail their compatriots, and carry-
ing in their hats a printed oath to live or die in defence
of the Parliament. The popular enthusiasm knew no
bounds ; and amid this display of excited patriotism,
the House of Commons took immediate and energetic
resolutions for the defence of the country. An armed
guard was appointed to watch the approaches to the
CROMWELL. 83
town, before a new governor of the Tower, in the con-
fidence of Parliament, should be appointed ; the gover-
nor of Portsmouth was ordered to receive no troops
or ammunition into that town without the sanction
of Parliament ; and Sir John Hotham, a gentleman of
influence in Yorkshire, was commanded to take pos-
session of Hull, the great northern arsenal, and pre-
serve it.
The King still professed to keep up negotiations
with Parliament, but his sole aim was now to o-ain
time to carry out the hostile measures on which he
had already resolved. He retired first to Hampton
Court and then to Windsor ; and there, in a secret coun-
cil, it was agreed that the Queen should proceed to
Holland, taking the crown jewels with her, and do all
she could to raise arms and ammunition, and excite
sympathy for the royal cause. As Charles returned
from Dover, where he had seen her embark, he was
met by urgent messages from Parliament as to the
command of the militia, which it claimed for men pos-
sessing its confidence. This was almost the last point
on which he held out. He had yielded the governor-
ship of the Tower ; he had even, against the advice
of Hyde, yielded to the tears of the Queen what his
own conscience strongly repudiated — the bill of exclu-
sion against the bishops ; but he would not give way on
the subject of the militia. Instead of returning to Lon-
don, he met the prince with his tutor at Greenwich,
and immediately set out northwards. Twelve Parlia-
mentary commissioners overtook him on his way, and
again solicited him on the subject of the militia ; but
he refused to alter his previous answer "in any point."
A week later new messengers found him at Newmarket,
and a long and excited conversation ensued ; Charles
84 ENGLIf^H PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
urging, with something of pathetic dignity, his com-
plaints, and Lord Holland, on behalf of the Parliament,
still reiterating the question of the militia. "Might
not the militia be granted, as desired by Parliament,
for a time?" "No, by God," was his reply, "not for
an hour. You have asked that of me which was never
asked of a king, and which I would not intrust to my
wife and children." And so was snapped the last feeble
thread of negotiation on both sides ; while parties
rapidly took their sides, and the country prepared for
a fierce and hitherto unexampled struggle.
During these two memorable years, Cromwell was
an active although not a prominent agent. Beside
Pym or Hampden, or even Strode or Haselrigge, he
was not conspicuous in the Commons. He did not
speak much, but he was constant on committees, zeal-
ous against the bishops, and in many ways one of the
most earnest, untiring, and forward of the party. We
find him moving for a conference with the Lords to
stay the investiture of five new bishops which Charles
was foolish enough to urge forward at such a time
(October 1641, just after the reassembling of the Par-
liament). We find him again bringing before the
House a calumny circulated by the royalists to the
effect that it was offended at the entertainment given
by the city to the King (27th November). But a still
more important motion than either of these was made
by him in the same month of November. The country
had been startled and horror-struck by the news of the
Papal insurrection and massacre in Ireland. It was
necessary that troops should be raised for the defence
of the kingdom ; and it became an obvious anxiety to
the popular party that these troops should not be
diverted from their proper object to the furtherance of
CROMWELL. 85
the King's private designs. This was exactly a point
to interest Cromwell, who was already beginning to see
more deeply into the nature of the crisis than many of
those around him. To the heads of a proposed confer-
ence with the Lords on the state of the kingdom, it
Avas accordingly added, " upon his motion," that the
two Houses should unite in passing an ordinance to
continue the command of the "train bands on that
side Trent" in the hands of the Earl of Essex (who
had been appointed to this command during the Kmg's
absence in Scotland), " until Parliament should take
further orders The effect of this motion was really
to open the question which, in the following year,
as we have seen, became the critical and final one be-
tween the Parliament and the King.
These, as well as other incidents, are sufficient to
prove the activity of Cromwell in the early years of
the Parliamentary struggle. There have been two
sketches of him, however, preserved during those years,
Avhicli perhaps give a still more lively impression of
the part that he took, and the zealous earnestness that
he showed, in the popular cause. They are of cog-
nate origin — neither of them flattering, yet both very
graphic in their way. The one is from the garrulous
pen of Warwick, and the other from the politely-ma-
licious pen of his friend and patron, Clarendon. We
subjoin them for the reader's gratification. He will
note particularly the photographic impress of the out-
ward features of our hero.
" The first time," says Warwick, " that I ever took
notice of ]Mr Cromwell, was in the very beginning
of the Parliament held in November 1640, when
I " (he was member for Ptadnor) " vainly thought my-
self a courtly young gentleman — for we courtiers
86 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
valued ourselves much upon our good clotlies ! I
came into the House one morning well clad, and
perceived a gentleman speaking, whom I knew not,
very ordinarily apparelled — for it was a plain cloth
suit, which seemed to have been made by an ill country
tailor. His linen was plain, and not very clean; and
I remember a speck or two of blood upon his little
band, which was not much larger than his collar.
His hat was without a hat-band. His stature was of
a good size ; his sword stuck close to his side ; his
countenance swollen and reddish, his voice sharp and
untuneable, and his eloquence full of fervour ; for the
subject-matter would not bear much of reason, it being
in behalf of a servant of Mr Prynne's, who had dispersed
libels against the Queen for her dancing ; and he aggra-
vated the imprisonment of this man by the council-
table unto that height, that one would have believed
the very government itself would have been in great
danger by it. I sincerely profess it lessened much my
reverence unto that great council, for he was very much
hearkened unto. And yet I lived to see this very
gentleman, whom, out of no ill-will to him, I thus
describe — by multiplied good successes, and by real
but usurpt power (having had a better tailor, and
more converse among good company) in my own eye,
when for six weeks together I was a prisoner in his
sergeant's hands, and daily waited at "Wliitehall — ap-
pear of a great and majestick deportment, and comely
presence."
The other description, by Clarendon, is equally cha-
racteristic. The scene is a private committee, which
sat in the Queen's Court; the subject regarding an en-
closure of certain wastes belonging to the Queen's man-
ors, which had been made without consent of the
CROMWELL. 87
tenants, and transferred by tlie Queen to one of her
servants " of near trust," who again had disposed of
his interest to the Earl of Manchester, against which
the tenants, as well as " the inhabitants of other man-
ors," had petitioned with loud complaints as a great
oppression. Notwithstanding Mr Hyde's courtly lan-
guage, the business does not look well — was, in fact,
just a case for the interference of the " Lord of the
Tens," who had already, in his own district, amply vin-
dicated the rights of the people against royal oppres-
sion in such matters. " Oliver Cromwell being one of
them," continues Hyde, " appeared much concerned to
countenance the petitioners, who were numerous, to-
gether with their witnesses ; the Lord Mandeville being
likewise present as a party, and, by the direction of the
committee, sitting covered. Cromwell, who had never
before been heard to speak in the House,* ordered the
witnesses and the petitioners in the method of pro-
ceeding, and seconded and enlarged upon what they
said with great passion ; and the witnesses and per-
sons concerned, who were a very rude kind of people,
interrupted the counsel and witnesses on the other
side with great clamour when they said anything that
did not please them; so that Mr Hyde (whose office
it was, as chairman, to oblige persons of all sorts to
keep order) was compelled to use some sharp reproofs,
and some threats, to reduce them to such a temper that
the business might be quietly heard. Cromwell, in
great fury, reproached the chairman for being partial,
and that he discountenanced the witnesses by threat-
ening them; the other appealed to the committee,
which justified him, and declared that he behaved him-
self as he ought to do, wliich more inflamed him
* Not true, as we have seen.
88 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
(Cromwell), who was already too much angry. When
Lord Mandeville desired to be heard, and with great
modesty related what had been done, or explained
what had been said, Mr Cromwell did answer and
reply upon him with so much indecency and rudeness,
and in language so contrary and offensive, that every
man would have thought that as their natures and
their manners were as opposite as it is possible, so
their interest could never have been the same."
Every one has seen such portraits as that drawn by
Warwick — the " stature of a good size," the " counte-
nance swollen and reddish," the " voice sharp and un-
tuneable," the " linen plain and not very clean," the
" speck or two of blood upon his little band " (an ex-
panse of shirt worn over the collar of the coat, with a
view to the long hair which was then fashionable), " not
much larger than the collar itself" (that is to say, un-
fashionably narrow in the eyes of the " courtly young
gentleman ") ; " the plain cloth suit made by an ill
country tailor." The features are exactly such as the
photograph stamps M-ith faithful unspirituality, while
the true portrait lies behind the outer and uuillumined
lines, to be called forth by the vivifying eye of the
friendly imagination — to every other eye invisible. The
process is not difficult in the present case ; it scarcely
needs, as with the reminiscent courtier, the help of " a
better tailor" to see in Warwick's literal but coarse like-
ness the true image of the Puritan hero, with his proud
soul lighting up his countenance, and suffusing it with
indignation ; plain and bluff in his dress and manners
now as at all times, but now also, under all his external
coarseness, having a certain "great and majestical de-
portment, and comely presence," no less than in his
days of state. Under the exaggerations of both sketches,
CROMWELL. 89
and especially tlie vehemence and "passion" of manner
on whicli they dwell, it is easy to trace the keen patriot,
warmed more by excitement in other people's sendee,
and the sense of wrong done by the strong against the
weak, than by any regard to liis own interests, or by the
impulses of his own ambition. There can be no doubt
that, although he was not yet recognised as a Parlia-
mentary leader, those who were ostensibly leaders saw
and appreciated his great powers, and looked forward
to his future career with interest, perhaps with awe.
" Who is that man — that sloven — that spoke just now ?
for 1 see that he is on our side by his speaking so
warmly," asked Lord Digby of Hampden, as they left
the House the same day that Sir Philip Warwick de-
scribes what he saw, and how it impressed him. Con-
ceited trimmers like Digby, whom the snares of the
Court so soon entangled, were not likely to know any-
thing of the blunt and uncouth member for Cam-
bridge. " That sloven," was Hampden's reply, " if
we should ever come to a breach with the King, which
God forbid, will be the greatest man in England."
It was not, however, till the crisis of the war that
Cromwell's peculiar and unexampled powers were
shown. As soon as the King's final determination about
the militia was known, he was found in his native district
organising an incipient force among the servants and
farmers who had formerly acknowledged and been em-
boldened by his influence. His military genius showed
itself from the first. The sense of a great talent awoke
in him, which might for ever have lain hid in the deep
background of his nature but for the exigency which
called it forth. The nucleus of his famous troop of Iron-
sides may be said to date from this very commencement
of the war — from the first preparations which he made
90 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
with such zealous foresight to preserve in the midland
counties the authority of the Parliament and extend its
power. These preparations were entirely successful,
effective in proportion to the quietness and decision with
which they were carried out. The Midland, or what
were called the Eastern Associated Counties, remained
true to the ])opular cause throughout the struggle ;
and from their unanimity and compact organisation,
escaped comparatively the miseries of actual warfare.
Of his military activity at this time we get merely
glimpses, but they are very significant and characteristic
glimpses. Tlie university of Oxford had already sent its
plate to the King for his service. Cambridge was medi-
tating a similar step when Cromwell appeared, "seized
the magazine in the castle, and hindered the carry-
ing of the plate from that university." His musketeers
were over all the country, keeping a vigilant watch
for the Parliamentary interests, " starting out of the
corn and commanding stray youths to give an account
of themselves." His uncle, Sir Oliver, had a visit from
him. The old royalist had evidently been meditatmg
help for the King in his straits, and his nephew and
godson " thought it might be well to pay him a visit
with a good strong party of horse." "Warwick is the
gossip here, as so often elsewhere ; and there is a de-
lightful piquancy in the story M'hich he tells — such a
mixture of business and dutifulness — of sternness to
the cause and yet reverent affection for his imcle —
that we are inclined to own its truth, doubtful as is
the source. " During the few hours that he was there
Cromwell asked him (the imcle) liis blessing, and
would not keep on his hat in his p)Tesence ; but at the
same time he not only disarmed but jjhtndcrcd him, for
he took away all his plate."
CROMWELL. 91
On the 23d of August 164-2, Charles raised the royal
standard at Nottingham, in an unpropitious storm of
wind which blew it do^vn again. The Earl of Essex,
at the head of the Parliamentary forces, received in-
structions, " by battle or other^^'ise, to rescue the King
and his sons from these perfidious counsellors, and
bring them back to Parliament." The Earl of Bed-
ford, a grave and moderate man, like Essex, was made
general of the horse ; and Oliver Cromwell was named
captain of the 67th troop.
Tlie King, accompanied by his nephew. Prince Ptupert,
lately arrived from Germany, removed to the western
counties, and set up his headquarters at Shrewsbury.
Essex advanced towards him slowly, and Charles
dreamed of marching upon London and finishing the
war by a single bold stroke. He had even proceeded
some days on his march, when Essex overtook him
on the borders of Warwickshire, and the first battle
ensued in this great struggle — the battle of Edgehill,
as it was called'. The result was indecisive. Prince
Eupert broke the Parliamentary horse and pursued
them from the field ; but, on the other hand, the royal
infantiy were dispersed, the Earl of Lindsay, com-
mander-in-chief, severely wounded, and the King's
standard taken.
Apparently it was after this battle, and the expe-
rience he derived from it, that Cromwell had that
remarkable conversation ^\ath Hampden which he him-
self narrates,"' as to the quality of the Parliamentary
forces, and the need of an entirely diflerent metal to
meet the aristocratic gallantry opposed to them. " At
my first going out into this engagement, I saw these
men (the men of the Parliament) were beaten at every
* Speech to Second Parliament. Carlyle, ii. 526.
92 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
hand, and I desired liim (Hampden) that he would
make some additions to my Lord Essex's army of some
new regiments, and I told him that I could be service-
able to him in bringing such men in as I thought had
a spirit that would do something in the work. This is
very true that I tell you ; God knows I lie not. Your
troops, said I, are most of them old decayed serving-
men and tapsters, and such kind of fellows, and, said I,
these troops are gentlemen's sons, younger sons, and
persons of quality ; do you think that the spirits of
such base and mean fellows will be ever able to en-
counter gentlemen that have honour and courage and
resolution in them ? Truly I did tell him, you must
get men of spirit." Hampden admitted the excellence
of the notion, but deemed it impracticable. Cromwell
set about convertiug it into a fact. He had already,
in truth, made a beginning with the men he had raised
in his own district. Carrying out the same plan, and
seeking for men of a religious spirit, potent to meet the
spirit of honour opposed to them, he formed a regiment
of horse, most of them freeholders and freeholders'
sons, who, " upon matter of conscience," engaged in the
quarrel under his guidance ; and being " well armed
within by the satisfaction of their own consciences,
and without by good iro7i arms, they would as one
man charge firmly and fight desperately." * " They
were never beaten," he himself said, proudly, of them.
And " bold as lions in fight, they were in camp tem-
perate and strict in their behaviour." " Not a man
swears but he pays his twelvepence," was the current
remark of the day regarding them.
The great soldier of the Cominonwealth was already
apparent in the captain of the 67th regiment of horse.
* Whitelockh.
CROMWELL. 93
The energy, compreliensioii, and snccess of his move-
ments marked him out at the first from the other Par-
liamentary commanders. In comparison with the re-
spectable patriotism of Essex, the ostentation of Wal-
ler, and the vacillating intrepidity of Manchester, he
was found steady, hopeful, self-possessed, victorious
in whatever was intrusted to him. None of all then
acting against the King — not even Hampden, nor
Oliver St John — saw so clearly that "things must
be much worse before they are better ;" and with
this calm and strong conviction, he took his measures
and made his preparations accordingly. While Essex
hesitated, and Parliament negotiated, he acted — and
acted with a decision which never returned upon itself
nor questioned its aims. This decision is the great
secret of his success. However we may explain it —
whether, with some, as a part of a deliberate and daring
scheme of ambition, formed from the beginning, or as
the expression of his honest and deeply-felt convictions
regarding the state of England at the time — it is the
great key to the sweeping energy with which he ad-
vanced from point to point in his great career. While
the accidents of the strife removed men like Hampden
on the one side and Falkland* on the other from the
scene ; and the pressure of unforeseen and unexplain-
able dangers, fast accumulating, wore out and destroyed
others like Pym — more than all the others great m the
senate, and capable of directing the storms of faction ;
Cromwell seemed to grow in proud confidence and
* There is something very touching in Falkland's death, notwithstand-
ing Mr Carlyle's sneer as to the " clean shirt." He courted and found
death on the field of Newbury, "weary," as he said, of the times, and
foreseeing much misery to his countiy. Clarendon's portrait of Falk-
land is one of his most perfect, and must always fascinate the historical
student.
94 ENGLISU PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
cheerful aud expanding consciousness of right as the
struggle went on. As Essex became more desponding,
and Waller .more incompetent, and Manchester more
scrupulous, and the great names of Pym and Hampden
remained no longer as guides amid the darkness, the rude
determination and unconquerable heroism of this man
made him master of every successive exigency, — and
what he gained he never lost. If we could conceive
Cromwell removed from the scene of struggle, and our
view only rested on the divisions of the already diverg-
ing parties in the Commons, or the inconsistencies and
feebleness of its generalship in the field, the chances of
internal dissolution would seem far more imminent than
approaching triumph to the popular cause. And Crom-
well himself was still labouring under this fear when,
more than a year hence, he openly accused Manchester
in the House of being reluctant to conquer. The rally-
ing but inconsistent forces of Puritanism, he felt, needed
a commander to unite them ; or, if this was impossiljle,
to carry the boldest principles of the movement to
triumph, and to bend the others into subordination
and harmony. More obscurely, perhaps, he felt even
then that he himself was that commander — that the
genius of the movement was destined to culminate in
him as its greatest hero.
In the early spring of 1643, Cromwell is for the first
time designated colonel, and shortly afterwards {May
] 643), he obtained, to use his own words, a " glorious
victory." The scene of tliis victory is supposed to
have been near to Grantham, although history has
failed to give any chronicle of it save his own brief
and characteristic description. " Advancing, after
many shots on both sides," he says, " we came on with
our troops a pretty round trot, they standing firm to
CROMWELL. 95
receive iis : and our men charging fiercely upon tliem,
by God's Providence tliey were immediately routed,
and ran all away ; and we had the execution of them
two or three miles. I believe some of our soldiers did
kill two or three men apiece in the pursuit."
His next achievement was the relief of Gainsborough,
which he effected after a sharp and bloody struggle,
in which General Cavendish, second son of the Earl of
Devonshire, and cousin of the Earl of Newcastle, then
the great representative of, and the most successful com-
mander for, the King in the north, was killed.* The
action was close hand to hand, " horse to horse," "when
we disputed it with our swords and pistols a pretty
time." The steadiness of Cromwell's men, however,
triumphed. " At last, they a little shrinking, our men
perceived it, pressed on upon them, and immediately
routed the whole body ; and our men pursuing, had
chase and execution about five or six miles." This
engagement was the first in which Cromwell came into
notice as a military leader. " It was the beginning of
his great fortunes," says Whitelock ; " now he began
to appear in the world."
It was in the month of July that this achievement
of Cromwell's took place. In the previous month
Hampden had fallen wounded to death in a skirmish
on Chalgrove Common, some miles from Oxford. He
was seen " to quit the field before the action was fin-
ished, contrary to his custom, with his head hanging
down." Charles, at Oxford, was greatly excited by
the news ; and with a pathetic courtesy, which touches
us even if we may doubt its sincerity, sent to inquire
for his great opponent, and to offer to send him medi-
* " My captain-lieutenant," says Cromwell, "slew him with a thrust
under his short ribs."
96 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
cal assistance if he liad none at hand. All assist-
ance, however, was vain. Hampden felt from the first
that his wound was mortal, and busied his last hours
in writing letters to his friends, and earnestly counsel-
ling those active measures for the prosecution of the
war that he had long had at heart. He was attended
by an old friend, Dr Giles, Rector of Chinnor, and his
dying words were words of prayer — " 0 Lord, save my
country."
Hampden's death, and Waller's serious reverses,
gave a very gloomy turn to the affairs of Parliament
at this time. On all sides save in the east they wore
a disastrous look. Here, notwithstanding the back-
wardness of Lord Willoughby, the Parliamentary gene-
ral, the vigour of Cromwell's influence was everywhere
apparent. Especially he held in check the forces of
Newcastle, and proved a terror to the northern Papists.
He had been appointed by the Parliament governor
of the Isle of Ely, and this strengthened his influence
throughout the district. In this capacity he is found
making a speech in Ely Cathedral, which must have
astonished his auditors. An Act of Parliament had
abolished the ecclesiastical usages obnoxious to the
Puritans. Cromwell counted it his business to see
the Acts of Parliament in this as in other things strictly
enforced ; and one of the canons being so foolish as to
disregard the new arrangements, and proceed in the
old manner of surplice and ceremony, he was saluted
with the cry, " Leave off your fooling, and come down,
sir" — a cry which doubtless startled the ecclesiastic
in the midst of his elaborate sanctities.
In the autumn of 1643 he had a hard fight at
Winceby, in which he nearly lost his life. " His horse
was killed under him at the first charge, and fell down
CROMWELL. 97
upon liim ; and as he rose up lie was knocked down
again." Afterwards, however, he recovered a "poor
horse in a soldier's hand, and bravely mounted him-
self again."* It is evident that Cromwell had enough
to do during the somewhat unhappy close of the first
period of the war. There is no evidence, however, that
he was for a moment desponding, or even embarrassed.
His letters betray an invariable self-confidence — a
steady faith.
The campaign of 1644 opened vigorously on both
sides. Essex and Waller commanded for the Parlia-
ment in the midland and western counties ; Manches-
ter and Cromwell in the eastern counties ; and Fairfax
and his father in the north co-operated with the
Scots, who had entered England to the number of
20,000, under the command of the Earl of Leven.
Newcastle, who had gallantly maintained the royalist
cause in the north, was now besieged in York by the
combined forces of the Parliament and the Scots.
Prince Eupert hastened from Lancashire at the head
of 20,000 men to his relief. On his approach the
Parliamentary forces raised the siege, and after an
ineffectual attempt to intercept him withdrew towards
Tadcaster. So far Eupert had accomplished his pur-
pose ; but, not content with this measure of success, he
insisted on giving battle to the Parliamentary army.
In spite of Newcastle's remonstrances, he carried his
design into effect. The marquess felt himself insulted
and overborne by the rude and impetuous prince. He
evidently discredited the existence of a letter from the
King, which the prince urged as his plea for fighting ;
yet he yielded, declaring that he had no other ambi-
tion than to live and die a royal subject. A somewhat
* Narrative by John Vicars, 1646 ; quoted by Carlyle, p. 190, vol. i.
G
98 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
similar dissension distracted the councils of the Par-
liamentarians. The Scots were opposed to battle, and
their timid counsels for a while prevailed, to the great
disgust and indignation of Cromwell. A battle, how-
ever, was inevitable. Eagerness on the one side was
responded to by hope * on the other ; and although the
Scots were already within a mile of Tadcaster, and
Manchester's foot were also on the march, they turned
at a summons from Fairfax that Eupert had drawn out
his forces to meet them on Long-Marston Moor ; and
there, on the evening of the 2d of July, the two armies
met. After a severe and varying struggle, which at
first seemed in favour of the Eoyalists, who broke and
dispersed both Fairfax's men on the left, and the Scots
in the centre under Leven, "vdctory declared in favour
of the Parliamentary army. The Eoyalists were driven
from the field with great disaster, and chased within a
mile of York ; " so that their dead bodies lay three
miles in length."
This decisive victory was, beyond doubt, mainly due
to Cromwell, who retrieved the day with his horse,
after it seemed nearly lost. There is no reason to
doubt the accuracy of his own account, that " the
battle had all the evidence of an absolute victory,
obtained by the Lord's blessing upon the godly party
principally. We never charged, but we routed the
enemy. The left wing which I commanded, being my
own horse, saving a few Scots f on our rear, beat all
the Prince's horse. God made them as stubble to our
swords." And it was after he had thus done his own
share of the work on the left that he swept round
* " Hope of a battle moved our soldiers to return merrily," says a
Parliamentary chronicler — AsH.
t Commanded by General David Leslie.
CROMWELL. 99
with his victorious horse to the right, where Fairfax
and Leven had yielded to the Eoyalists, and turned there
also tlie tide of battle.
The event was a signal one for Cromwell and the
army, and more than justified Prince Eupert's eager
inquiry at a prisoner who was taken on the eve of the
engagement — " Is Cromwell there ? " It was beginning
to be felt now, on all hands, that he was the great hero
on the Parliamentary side of the struggle. He and the
" godly party " that he represented henceforth emerge
into prominence as the genuine war-party. It was
evident that they had aims beyond the Presbyterians,
and that they were rapidly acquiring an influence in
the army which would enable them to carry out these
aims. The very extremity of their views gave them
strength on the field. While Essex in the south and
west, and Leven in the north, were distracted in their
warlike efforts by their desires of peace, and Manches-
ter shared in their anxieties, Cromwell and his party
had no misgivings. Their minds were not set on
peace. They saw the deeper turn that the revolution
was taking, and they gladly gave themselves to the
current. Cromwell himself more and more felt that
war was his element — that his place of power was on
the battle-field. It was there that his soul kindled into
greatness, and that his marvellous energies for the first
time had found adequate scope. The tone in which he
writes, accordingly, shows how far aU ideas of peace
were from his mind at this period — how he was knit-
ting himself up to a fiercer struggle than ever, and how
his own side of the cause was becoming more intensely
and dogmatically consecrated to his mind and imagina-
tion as the cause of God.
But this very determination on the part of Cromwell
100 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
and liis followers, it may be imagined, filled moderate
men all the more with distrust and apprehension. They
seemed to awaken suddenly to a perception of the
dangerous character of this powerful leader. Man-
chester especially, perhaps from more immediate con-
tact with him, and a closer cognisance of his designs,
became alarmed and doubtful. The old bonds of
amity between the general and lieutenant of the
eastern associated counties were broken — never to be
repaired. The altercation which subsequently ensued
between them in Parliament was merely the expres-
sion of a deep-seated misunderstanding and dis-
like that had been for some time springing up. The
Peer resented the forward zeal and incessant inter-
ference of his lieutenant ; the latter was indignant at
the indecision, and what he no doubt considered the in-
competency of his general. Perhaps we may infer,
from Clarendon's story of their early conflict, that there
never had been any great heartiness of affection be-
tween them. On one side the moderate men drew
together, and held meetings as to the critical aspect of
affairs, and the dangerous prominence into which a
single triumphant soldier was rising. On the other,
Cromwell separated himself more definitely from the
Presbyterian party, taking Fairfax with him, and
bent with an unflinching heart on a more energetic
and conclusive prosecution of the war.
The slight results that had followed the great victory
of Marston Moor, Essex's reverses in the south-west,
and the submission of his troops, helped to confirm
Cromwell in his views. He and all the decisive party
felt that some great stroke must be struck, before the
royal power could be overthrown, and the poj)ular
cause, as they esteemed it, triumph. While these dis-
CROMWELL. 101
sensions were still at their height, the armies met
once more on their old ground at Newbury.* Charles,
inflated by the news of Montrose's triumphs in Scot-
land, made a sudden resolve to march upon London.
Parliament, however, collected its forces and waited his
movement. Essex, ill at ease and despondent, refused
to join the army and take the command ; but Man-
chester took his place, and Cromwell headed, as before,
the horse. After some severe skirmishing on the two
previous days, the serious fight began on the 29th of
October. It was long and bloody, and contested with
desperate bravery on both sides. At night, when the
moon rose above the field of carnage, it was unde-
cided. The Eoyalist troops had not suffered more than
their opponents, and still stood their ground. But
Charles, apprehensive and hopeless of victory, with-
drew his forces during the niglit in the direction of
Oxford. The vigilant eye of Cromwell detected this
movement, and he earnestly implored Manchester to
allow him to fall with his cavalry upon the retreating
army. But Manchester refused ; and the fruits of a
virtual victory were again lost.
Cromwell returned to Parliament full of gloomy
resolves. He took Vane into his counsel, and silently
they formed their plans for a new organisation of the
army, and the subversion of the Presbyterian generals,
under whose guidance so little good had come of their
fighting. In Parliament they had to proceed cau-
tiously, as they were still there in a considerable
minority. His indignation, however, against Man-
chester could not be restrained ; and he had scarcely
returned, when he openly accused him of lack of zeal,
and of backwardness in the cause. Ever since the
* Where Falkland bad fallen in September 1G43.
102 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
taking of York, following the victory at Marston Moor,
he had seemed afraid of decisive victory, he said, " as if
he thought the King too low, and the Parliament too
high." Manchester retorted in the House of Lords, and
did not spare Cromwell, whom he in turn accused of
disrespectful and seditious language towards both the
House of Lords and the King. He did not hesitate even
to bring forward an unmeaning and absurd charge of
cowardice, which Cromwell's enemies had trumped up
against him. Great excitement and alarm prevailed
among the Presbyterians. Cromwell had become their
bugbear. They held consultations as to whether they
should impeach him. Essex's house was their rendez-
vous ; and Wliitelocke has preserved a very graphic
account of a meeting, to attend which both he and
Maynard were sent for in the middle of the night. It
ended in nothing, and Cromwell only grew stronger as
he took a higher courage from the baffled movements
of his enemies.
In the month of December he ventured openly upon
the first part of the scheme which he, Vane, and others
had concocted. The House of Commons was met in a
grand committee, to consider the sad condition of the
kingdom groaning under the intolerable burdens of the
war ; and " there was a general silence for a good space
of time,", every one waiting for the other to begin the
unpleasant subject, when Lieutenant-General Crom-
well rose to speak — " it being now high time to speak,
or for ever hold the tongue," as he said. He spoke
of the miserable condition of the country, and then of
what the enemy, and even " those who had been
friends at the beginning said, that the members of
Parliament were contiuuinu; the war for their own
CROMWELL. 103
private interests — having got great places and com-
mands, and the sword in their hands ;" and then sug-
gesting that all " strict inquiry " or recrimination
should be abandoned as to past oversights, of which he
admitted himself guilty as well as others ; he expressed
a trust that, having true English hearts and zealous
affection towards the general weal of their mother
country, there were no members of either House who
would scniple to deny themselves and their own private
interests for the public good.
The result of this ingenious movement is well
known as the " self- denying ordinance," which, after
much debate, and having been rejected by the Lords,
was at length passed by both Houses.
There has been a great deal of discussion as to
Cromwell's particular relation to this ordinance. Did
he mean honestly to include himself under its dis-
qualifying clauses ? And was it merely the force of
circumstances, and the necessities of Parliament, that
afterwards secured him in his military command?
Or was it part of the scheme from the first, that while
Essex and Waller and Manchester were got rid of, he
should be retained, and the way more completely
opened for his ambition ? The selection of Fairfax for
general, who was known to be under Cromwell's in-
fluence, and the keeping open his own appointment of
lieutenant-general, or second in command, are pre-
sumptions in favour of the latter view. The general
facts of the case — the improbability of men like Vane
and Ludlow being parties to any scheme of mere
personal ambition on Cromwell's part — the accidental
manner in which Cromwell's services were protract-
ed, and, with apparent reluctance, authorised by the
104 ENGLISH rURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
Commons — Josliiia Sprigge's empliatic statement ■"' on
the subject — all favour the former opinion.
Any general argument on either side is beset by diffi-
culties. It may be safely said, however, that there is no
evidence that the men who assisted Cromwell to carry
this measure were accomplices with him in any delibe-
rately planned scheme of ambition to serve his interests.
They acted mainly, no doubt, from an honest motive to
serve their own designs, and bring the war to a success-
ful determination. They saw that nothing but such a
sweeping measure, and the reconstruction of the Parlia-
mentary forces under new generals, who should be free
from the jealousy and timidity of the old ones, could
secure such a result. Vane and others knew Cromwell's
great military genius and decision, without doubting at
this time that his patriotic views w^ere similar to their
own. They looked, therefore, without distrust on his
continuance in his command, f Their aim was to have
an efficient army, d'nd only secondarily, and with a
view to this primary aim, to deprive certain officers of
their command. As for Cromwell himself, we cannot
believe that lie contemplated his own permanent re-
tirement from the stage of military affairs. He knew
his own strength and the needs of his country too
well to allow us to suppose that he could have delibe-
rately entertained such an idea. Essex and Waller
and Manchester might pass from the scene. The ac-
cidents of their lot, more than anything else, had
placed them where they were ; and, unambitious as
* See extract from his Anglia Bediviva, afterwards quoted, and found
at length in Carls le, vol. i. p. 206. Sprigge was ehajjlain to Fairfax,
and has left in this work a " florid but authentic " account of the new
model army, by whose exertions the war was brought to a triumphant
close.
+ There is evidence of this, Carlyle says, p. 208, vol. i.
CROMWELL. 105
both Essex and Manchester were, they laid down
their command probably with more pleasure than
they ever took it up. But Cromwell's charac-
ter and position were altogether different. Of all
men he was the genius of the crisis, and he could
only pass away with it. To suppose that his retention
of his command was a result of his own elaborate
deception, consciously worked to this end, is to mistake
his character, and to contradict certain undeniable
facts ; but to suppose, on the other hand, that he
doubted that his services could be retained, is to
credit him with a dulness from which no man was
more free. He knew all the circumstances of the
case, and no doubt calculated on the issue. These
circumstances, far more than any plot or direct schem-
ing on his part or others, had the real settling of the
business.
The story is, and it seems perfectly credible, that he
came to Windsor " to kiss the general's hand, and take
leave of him, when, in the morning, ere he was gone
forth of his chamber," certain commands were received
by him, " than which he thought of nothing less in all
the world," * to pursue and attack a convoy sent by
Prince Paipert to transport the King from Oxford to
Worcester. The connnands were from the committee
of both kingdoms ; and immediately on receiving them
Cromwell took horse, and not merely attacked the con-
voy successfully, but, after his wonted manner, per-
formed various gallant exploits in succession. Fairfax
no doubt honestly felt that he could not want him ;
and he and other officers accordingly petitioned Parlia-
ment that he might be appointed lieutenant-general,
and commander-in-chief of the horse. The Commons
* Sprigge.
106 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
continued his services for " forty clays," and then for
" three months," and so on, until at last, in the glory
of his exploits, and the need of his guidance, no one
challenged his position, and he assumed his natural
supremacy as the real head of the army of the Com-
monwealth.
After various deeds in his old district, he is found
on the memorable field of ISTaseby. Fairfax, who had
laid siege to Oxford, suddenly raised it at the com-
mand of Parliament to go in search of the King, and
try the new army in a decisive contest. Consciously
reliant on the stronger genius of his friend, it was then
that he sent the message to the Commons about Crom-
well, and that the latter, at his invitation, hastened to
join him. They came up with the King's forces at
Naseby, a small hamlet near Northampton ; . and here,
on the 14th of June 1645, after three hours' fight very
doubtful, and conspicuous deeds of bravery on both
sides, Eupert's wonted heedlessness in pursuit, and
Cromwell's steadiness, self-control, and his final charge
at the head of his dragoons, decided the fate of the day.
]S]"ever did soldiers fight better than Cromwell's troopers
on this great day, and he was not slow to improve the
occasion. " Sir," wrote Cromwell to the Speaker of the
Commons House of Parliament, on the very field of
battle, a day before the despatch of Fairfax, " this is
none other but the hand of God ; and to Him alone
belongs the glory wherein none are to share with Him.
The general served you with all faithfulness and hon-
our ; and the best commendation I can give him is,
that I dare say he attributes all to God, and would
rather perish than assume to himself — which is an
honest and a thriving way ; and yet as much for bravery
may be given to him in this action as to a man. Honest
CROMWELL. 107
men served you faithfully in this action. Sir, they are
trusty ; I beseech you in the name of God not to dis-
courage them. He that ventures his life for the liberty
of his country, I wish he trust God for the liberty of
his conscience, and you for the liberty he fights for."
The Eoyalist power was completely broken by the
battle of Naseby. Charles in vain tried to rally new
forces in Wales ; he in vain looked towards Scotland,
where Montrose, after a succession of brilliant skir-
mishes, had at length been utterly vanquished at Philips-
haugh by Leslie. Discomfited and discouraged on all
sides, he again withdrew into Oxford for a while. In
the mean time, the Parliamentary forces under Crom-
well pursued their career of victory. After having re-
duced the " clubmen " m the south-west — for the most
part " poor silly creatures," whom the hardships in the
war on both sides had goaded to an active resistance
in their own behalf — he marched towards Bristol, which
had been lost to the Parliament in the first year of the
war. After a vigorous storm, and obstinate resistance,
the Parliamentary forces made themselves masters of
its outer forts, and Prince Eupert was glad to capitu-
late for a free exit. This may be said to have been
the last great stroke of the war. With the fall of
Bristol, the hopes of Eoyalism were extinguished.
Eupert was driven forth a wanderer without an army,
and Charles himself left without succour.
From Bristol the triumphant Puritans marched
southward, reducing every stronghold on their way —
Winchester, Basing House, Wallop. In the south and
in the west, where they had hitherto been strongest,
the remains of the Eoyalist forces were entirely crushed.
Sir Ealph Ilopton, one of the most honourable of all
the commanders on the side of the King, was driven
108 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
into Cornwall, and finally, in the following spring,
compelled to surrender the wreck of his army, and
betake himself to the Continent.
The King, shut up in Oxford, moodily contemplated
the ruin of his adherents everywhere. Sir Jacob
Astley, almost the very last of those who kept the
field for him, was surrounded and captured on his way
to join him at Oxford, on the 22d of March 1646. He
is reported to have said, as he fell into the hands of the
enemy, " You have now done your work, and may go to
play, unless you fall out among yourselves." Charles
saw no rescue ; and in the end of the following month
at midnight, on the 27th of April, he left Oxford in
disguise, and sought shelter in the Scottish camp at
Newcastle.
This closed the "First Civil War;" four years of
bloody and varying struggle, in which one man, more
than any other, amidst all its vicissitudes, had been
seen to rise step by step. At the opening of the war
his name had been little more than heard of within
the precincts of Westminster, — at its close, his fame
was second to none in England. The Parliament
hastened to do honour to him. He was welcomed
with state, and received the thanks of the House for
his " great and many services." A pension of .£'2500
was settled on himself and family, and certain land
granted to him as a security for the allowance.
It is no part of our plan to endeavour to trace the
thread of movements and negotiations which fol-
lowed Charles's retirement to the Scottish camp — his
continued refusal to come under the conditions of the
Covenant — his attempts to play off the Presbyterians
against the Independents and the Independents against
the Presbyterians — the failure of the treaty of New-
' CROMWELL. 109
castle — the King's surrender into the hands of the Par-
liament— and the further train of negotiations which
sprang from this event. These two years' intrigues, in
all their meaning and aims, remain still very intricate
and baffling to the historical student. In all that
concerns Cromwell especially, the entanglement is
extreme ; and it cannot be said that the most recent
elucidations clear up anything here. To what extent
Cromwell deliberately encouraged and abetted the
schemes of the army — to what extent he was drawn
along unwillingly into these schemes, and forced by
the necessity of his position to act as he did — as the
only condition of saving himself and his compatriots —
it is difficult to say. The more we look at all the cir-
cumstances, the more does the idea of conscious design
on the part of Cromwell to guide the conflict to its
issue recede into the background ; and that issue itself
appear as a terrible retribution waiting on the hopeless
jealousies of rival interests, as yet inflamed rather than
satisfied by the blood that had been shed on both
sides. The result long hung in the balance. The
Parliament, backed by the city, was really bent on
settlement with the King, if he would only adopt the
Covenant and authorise the Presbyterian form of Church
government. The army, confident in its own strength,
and especially in the thoroughness and earnestness of
its fanatical convictions, had no thoughts of com-
promise. As between the two, Cromwell and others
seemed to mediate ; but all his sympathies and all his
convictions were with the army. He knew them and
they knew him. He himself may have been really
anxious to treat with Charles ; there may have been
even some foundation for the alleged agreement be-
tween them, whereby he was to receive an earldom
110 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
and the government of Ireland ; there can be no
doubt that his frequent presence at Hampton had
nearly excited to outbreak the jealous fanaticism of
the army. But he could, nevertheless, have scarcely be-
lieved in the possibility of a reconcilement at this time ;
he saw with too open an eye all the difficulties of the
position.
Whatever sincerity may have animated Cromwell in
the various projects for a settlement, there was no
sincerity on Charles's part. His duplicity strength-
ened as his weakness increased. It had become a
part of his nature, nay, of his religion ; and while with
the one hand he professed to yield, with the other he
communicated to the Queen that she might be entirely
easy as to his concessions which he made, as he had
no intention of observing them when the time came.
The story of Cromwell and Ireton discovering the
King's secret correspondence with the Queen sewed up
in a saddle on the way to Dover, may be apocryphal,
but it is perfectly conceivable. And even, as a story,
it symbolised the universal feeling as to Charles's in-
veterate and hopeless falsehood. This feeling, that it
was impossible to bmd him — that after all that had
been gained nothing was really secure if he was only
restored to power — coupled with the mounting fana-
ticism and proud resentment of the army, which had
already begun to look on the King as the great criminal
whose arbitrary ambition had been the cause of so
much bloodshed in the country, effectually rendered
all projects of treaty impracticable, and was fast pre-
paring the way for the tragedy which was to end the
struggle.
The great meeting at Windsor, in the beginning of
1648, bears a marked significance in this point of view.
CKOMWELL. 1 1 1
It is plain that the idea of Charles's fate had then be-
come fixed in the minds of the leaders of the army. The
picture is an awful and exciting one — lurid with the wild
gleam of religious passion, and darkened by the clouds of
political hatred. There is a peculiar mystery of horror,
now as at all times, in the mixture of divine ideas with
men's hates, jealousies, and revenges. " After one whole
day spent in prayer, on the next day, after many had
spoken from the word and prayed, Lieutenant-General
Cromwell did press very earnestly on all present to a
thorough consideration of our actions as an army, and
of our ways, particularly as private Christians, to see if
any iniquity could be found in them, and what it was,
that if possible we might find it out, and so remove
the cause of such sad rebukes as were upon us." . . .
Then after another day's self-examination and prayer,
and " bitter weeping, so that none was liardly able to
speak a word to each other, they were led and helped
to a clear agreement among themselves, not only dis-
cerning that it was the duty of our day, with the forces
we had, to go out and fight against those potent ene-
mies which that year in all places appeared against us,
with a humble confidence in the name of the Lord,
only that we should destroy them. . . . And we were
also enabled then after sermon, seeking His face, to
come to a very clear and formal resolution on many
grounds at large then debated amongst us : that it
was our duty, if ever the Lord brought us again in peace,
to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to account for
that blood he had shed and mischief he had done to
his utmost against the Lord's cause and people in these
poor nations. "■^'
It is pleasing to turn from this unhappy picture to
•■ Carlyle, vol. i. p. 313.
112 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
contemplate our hero in a different liglit. Of his
family we do not learn much in those years, but they
had now grown up around him. Of his five sons, in-
deed, only two remained. The eldest, Eobert, had
died in 1639, at Felsted, where he had probably been
living with his maternal grandfather, who had his
country-seat there. The burial registers of that parish
contain a singular entry regarding him, celebrating his
piety and speaking of his father as t'lr honoraiidus.
He died at the age of nineteen, in the full promise of
his opening manhood {fuit exiniic 2'>'i'US juveniss, dcum
timcns supra multos, says the register) : and there can
now be no doubt that it was to this untimely and bitter
stroke that the father alluded, in the memorable words
as to " his eldest son," that he uttered on his deathbed.*
Although no trace of it is to be found in any of his
correspondence, the deep sorrow had yet sunk into his
heart, to come forth to the light again in the moment
of his own approaching fate. His second son Oliver,
who lived to be a cornet in the eighth troop of what
was called " Earl Bedford's horse," was slain in battle,
but at what particular date remains unknown. His
two eldest daughters were both married in the spring
of 1646 ; the one to Ireton, and the second to Clay-
pole, who became " Master of the Horse" to Cromwell.
His peculiar attachment to " Lady Claypole " is
well known. Writing from Scotland in 1651, he says,
with the j)eculiar brief pathos at times characteristic
* See Foster's Essay on the Civil Wars and Cromwell, an admirable
piece of historical criticism, like all the other writings of the author
on this fruitful time. For the discovery of the parish register of Fel-
sted, and the fact that Cromwell's eldest son lived to manhood— a fact
um-ecognised even in Mr Carlyle's volumes — the public are indebted to
Mr Foster. Both Mr Carlyle and Guizot make the words of the death-
bed refer to the death of Oliver (the second son) .
CROMWELL. 113
of liim : " I earnestly and frequently pray for licr and
for liim [her husband]. Truly they are dear to me —
very dear." We nowhere, however, trace his hand in
correspondence with her.
The following remarkable letter is addressed to his
elder daughter, Mrs Ireton, in the autumn of 1646,
while the negotiations with the King were proceeding.
It deserves to be set before the reader fully in the light
which it casts upon the character of both father and
daughter. The intensity of religious persuasion which
animated both comes out very strongly. After excus-
ing himself for not writing to her husband, from the
laudable and considerate plea that " one line of mine be-
gets many of his, which I doubt makes him sit up too
late," he continues : " Your friends at Ely are well ;
your sister Claypole is, I trust in mercy, exercised
with some perplexed thoughts. She sees her own
vanity and carnal mind ; bewailing it, she seeks
after (as I hope also) what will satisfy : and thus to be
a seeker is to be of the best sect next to a finder; and
such an one shall every faithful humble seeker be at
the end. Happy seeker, happy finder ! Who ever
tasted that the Lord is gracious, without some sense
of self- vanity and badness ? Who ever tasted that
graciousness of His, and could go less in desire — less
than pressing after full enjoyment? Dear heart, press
on ; let not husband, let not anything cool thy affec-
tions after Christ. I hope he will be an occasion to
inflame them. That which is best worthy of love
in thy husband is that of the image of Christ he bears.
Look on that and love it best, and all the rest for that.
I pray for thee and him ; do so for me. " Surely touch-
ing and grand words ! No indifference or derision
can empty them of their meaning. There is a reality
H
114 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
and weight of meaning in every sentence, beside which
the common sort of religious commonplace is dim and
pale. That tliey came from our hero's heart none can
doubt, however they may try in vain to fathom the
strange mystery of this heart.
The long, intermitting correspondence regarding the
marriage of his son Kichard, serves also to present him
in a very characteristic light. It began in February
1647-8, and did not terminate till April 1649. It is
marked by eminent sense and shrewdness, and a
prudent forethought and care as to settlements in his
son's interest. There is a swift decisive summariness
in it, and a force of meaning in every sentence no less
notable than in his more serious letters. It matters
not what the business in hand may be, Cromwell Avould
have it done at once and well. Eichard's character
also stands clearly depicted in these letters as that of a
good, easy, and unambitious man, of gentle, cheerful,
and strong affections, but singularly unendowed by
any of his father's vigorous and aspiring temper.*
The meeting of the army leaders, we have seen, took
place in the spring of 1648 ; and the Presbyterians,
now finally alienated from the Independents, were
already active in discontent and open tumult. In
Kent, in Wales, and in the north, there were signs of
renewed agitation on behalf of the King. The Scotch
had at length declared in favour of Eoyalty, against
the " Sectaries," and entered England, 40,000 strong,
under the command of the Duke of Hamilton. Leav-
ing a portion of the Eepublican party at St Alban's to
* On the Cth of April 1649, Cromwell writes to his " woi-thy friend,
Richard Mayor, Esquire, at Horsley," thus : " Sir — My son had a great
desire to come down and wait upon your daughter. I perceive that he
minds that mwe than to attend to business here" [London].
CROMWELL. 115
overav/e the capital (doubtfully Presbyterian), Crom-
well marched towards Wales, and began what has
been called the " Second Civil War." It was but of
brief continuance. At the head of his veterans he
attacked and took Pembroke Castle, and speedily sub-
dued Wales. He then hurried northwards to encoun-
ter the Scotch under Hamilton. The battle of Preston,
in the month of August, may be said to finish the
campaign. Nothing could be more complete than
the disaster which he inflicted on the immense and
disorderly mass of the Scotch army, but imperfectly
hearty in the cause for which they fought. His suc-
cess was again everywhere complete. The Kirk party
in Scotland, headed by Argyle, lent their influence to
aid his designs. The conqueror advanced into Edin-
burgh, took up his abode in the " Earl of Murrie's
house in the Cannigate " there ; accepted a great
banquet from the submissive Covenanters ; and, hav-
ing put things in order to his mind, returned south-
wards. He was again in England, busy with renewed
negotiations about the King before the close of the
year.
The Royalist interests were now everywhere crushed.
The Presbyterians, still nominally a majority in Par-
liament, were in reality defeated. The army had en-
tirely broken wdth them, and its leaders were already
the true masters of England. They knew their power,
and waited their opportunity. While Cromwell tar-
ried in the north, extinguishing the last embers of
Eoyalist disaffection. Parliament made one more last
effort to come to an understanding with the King,
and so arrest the power of the Revolution, which
it felt was fast sweeping towards itself It was
in vain. The forty days' treaty of IsTewport came to
116 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
nothing, like all its predecessors. Charles was hope-
less ; long-practised craft had poisoned the very foun-
tains of trust in him, and treaty with him was no longer
possible. The Parliament had ceased to be powerful ;
the force which it had evoked in its own defence had
risen up against it ; its creature had grown to be its
master. While other interests had suffered from the
continuance of the war, the army had risen on their
weakness or ruins, and it now stood the only govern-
ing power in England.
On the 20th of November we find Oliver at Knot-
tingley, writing to Fairfax as to the grievances of the
army, and his quiet determination to support them. All
the regiments had petitioned against the treaty of New-
port, and " for justice and a settlement of the king-
dom"— a sufficiently ominous petition! Cromwell
expresses his sympathy with them, and is persuaded
that the cause is a good cause — nay, a divine one.
" I find," he says, " in the officers of the regiments a
very great sense of the sufferings of this poor kingdom ;
and in them all a very great zeal to have impartial
justice done upon offenders. And I must confess I
do in all, from my heart, concur with them ; and I
verily think, and am persuaded, that they are things
which God puts into our hearts."
At the same time, only a few days later, he writes
to Colonel Hammond, who was in charge of the
King in the Isle of Wight, one of his most re-
markable letters.* We can read in it the struggling
depths of his spirit, and the stern though confused
strength of his convictions. Undivine as these con-
victions may seem to us, they seemed to him to rest on
an eternal foundation. Hypocrisy is about the very last
♦ Caulyle, i. 393.
CROMWELL. 117
word we should think of applying to them. It is not
a double mind, hut a too intense and absorbed mind,
out of which they come. It is the madness of a fixed
idea, and not the treachery of a false nature, of which
they are born. The fearful duty towards which he
points, is obviously no pretence of language, but the
overmastering impress of a diseased faith, which has
taken up into its supposed divine warrant all human
scruples and personal interests, and sublimated them
till they seem celestial in the consecrating halo through
which he views them. " If the Lord have in any mea-
sure persuaded His people of the lawfulness — nay, of
the duty — this j^^rsuasion ijrcvailing upon the heart is
faith : and acting thereupon, is acting in faith ; and the
more the difficulties are, the more the faith." Out of
such a faith, it is not difficult to see what duties — nay,
what crimes — might grow.
This letter to young Hammond never reached its
destination. He had been wavering for some time in
his trust, puzzled and awestruck, as well he might be,
by the dire crisis gathering around him. With his
scruples, " dear Eobin " was not to be trusted, even
to the force of such arguments as Cromwell's let-
ter contained ; and, accordingly, a more imperative
argument is served upon him in the shape of an order
to remove to headquarters at Windsor, while a less
scrupulous Colonel Ewer, who had already distin-
guished himself by his forwardness in the presenta-
tion of the army remonstrance to the Parliament,
beset the royal lodgings at Newport, and removed the
King to a more solitary and secure confinement in
Hurst Castle.
Things now rapidly approached the end which
Cromwell and others had foreseen and prepared for
118 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
some time. The Commons refused to entertain the
remonstrance of the army by a large majority. The
news rekindled the military devotion which we have
already seen so ominous in its results. After a day
spent in prayer, the army resolved to march upon
London. This was on the 2d of December. On the
4th, Parliament had not only dismissed the army re-
monstrance, but decided, by a majority of forty-six,
that his Majesty's concessions in the treaty of New-
port were a ground of settlement. On the 6th, two
regiments — one of cavalry, and one of foot — were
marched into Palace Yard, and into AVestminster Hall ;
and Colonel Pride, with a paper in his hand, contain-
ing a list of the obstinate majority, furged* the Parlia-
ment of refractory Presbyterians, and left the Inde-
pendents victors on the floor of St Stephen's as in
the ranks of the army.
The result is well known. The House of Com-
mons, tliinned in numbers — reduced to a mere frac-
tion of its numbers — resolved to impeach the King,
and bring him to trial. The Lords tried to interpose
some obstacles when the ordinance instituting a high
court to try the King came before them. Man-
chester, Denbigh, and Pembroke declared they would
have nothing to do with it. " I would be torn to
pieces, rather than take part in so infamous a busi-
ness," said Denbigh. The Commons, however, deter-
mined to proceed without them, and the High Court
of Justice, with John Bradshaw at its head, began
its proceedings on the 8th of January. After three
weeks' sitting, and many strange and exciting inci-
dents, the King was condemned on the 27th. His
lofty and quiet mien, in contrast with that of his rude
* Carlyle's picture of this famous event is very graphic- -p. 399.
CROMWELL. 119
and stormy accusers, has stamped itself indelibly on
the historical imagination. It is an impressive and
touching picture. Charles appeared the hero at last,
when the long web of his craft had run out, and he
was thrown back upon the simple dignity of his kingly
temper.
On the 29th, the warrant for the execution was
signed and sealed ; and on the following day, in
"the open street before Whitehall," Charles Stuart,
"king of England," was beheaded amid the tears of
his attendants and the wonder of the multitude.
Cromwell apparently took no siKcial share in these
proceedings. There is no reason whatever to believe,
as has been represented, that he had the King's life in
his hands ; and the stories as to the visit of his cousin,
and other interpositions made with him on the King's
behalf, are in the main mere exaggerations. What credit
is due to the other and less worthy stories as to his
strange, mad levity — his smearing Henry Martin's
face with ink, after his signing the death-warrant, and
Martin in turn smearing his, it is difficult to say. He
had such a mad turn with him, beyond doubt. The ter-
rible workings of his inner life, the tumult of principle
and aspiration which often raged within him, sometimes
broke out in this ungovernable manner, showing, yet
hiding, the wild surging of passion within in an unintel-
ligible uproar and folly of external manner. It is a suffici-
ently awful contrast — the buffoonery of the triumphant
soldier, and the pathetic dignity of the fallen monarch ;
but even if that traditionary imagination, which is
always tender to suffering and severe to successful
principle, has not given much of the contrasted colour-
ing to the two pictures, we must remember that the
character of a great historical event is not to be decided
120 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
by tlie mere beauty or ofFensiveness of its accidents.
Crime or not, the death of Charles seemed, beyond
doubt, to those who were concerned in it, the inevitable
issue of the great struggle in which they had been
engaged. It w^as the ending of the tragedy — the Nemesis
of long years of suffering and tyranny. The pathos
of it must ever move our pity ; but even our horror of
it forms no ground on which utterly to condemn it.
Cromwell Avas now virtually master of England.
As head of the army, he was the head of the nation.
It is true that Fairfax still continued nominally
first in command ; and that Cromwell, even some
time after this, professed not only a willingness, but
apparent eagerness, to serve under his old friend, say-
ing he would rather do so than command the greatest
army in Europe.* But while this nominal precedence
was still conceded 'to Fairfax, the real power and su-
premacy lay with our hero. A Council of State was
appointed to manage the executive in civil affairs ; and
Cromwell consented to go with the flower of his vete-
rans to Ireland, and reduce that kingdom to civil order
and obedience.
A stern duty, however, awaited him in the first in-
stance. The spirit of insubordination continued to
spread in the army. So far, he had yielded to this spirit,
and identified himself with it. The King's death had
been hastened on and accomplished under its exciting
influence, sweeping all before it, and really controlling
the organisation of Parliament, while the latter yet pro-
fessed to act in some measure independently and ac-
cording to its lawful forms. It was clear, however, that
unless the spirit of agitation was checked, the bonds of
all order would be dissolved, and government rendered
* Russel's Cromwell, vol. ii. p. 45.
CROMWELL. 121
impossible. Cromwell saw and appreciated the crisis ;
and, secure of the main leaders, who had been actively
concurring with him in the King's death, and whose
ambition and vengeance were fully satiated for the
time, he resolved to strike a swift and effective blow
on the first reappearance of disorder. Accordingly, a
mutiny having broken out in Whalley's regiment, the
prominent disturbers were seized, tried by court-mar-
tial, and one of the most vehement of them shot down
forthwith in St Paul's Churchyard. The disturbance
spreading to the regiments quartered in the country,
the same effective measures were adopted. Lilburne, a
particularly noisy agitator of the time, was securely
imprisoned, other ringleaders were shot, and the
" levellers " everywhere quelled. It was a moment of
imminent danger ; and what it might have come to,
save for the energy of the Lieutenant-General, it is diffi-
cult to say. But here, as everywhere, he was master
of the moment ; and while he saved his country
from anarchy, he raised his own fortunes to a higher
pedestal.
The career of victory on which he now entered — at
the head of an army that had learned respect, as well
as affection for him — first in Ireland, and then in Scot-
land, is written broadly in the history of his country.
The mingled glory and carnage of his Irish campaign
have formed a theme for the eulogy of his admirers,
and the detractions of his enemies almost equally.
The military genius which it displayed, the swift energy
and decision of his movements, the terrible grandeur
of his work, all admit ; while there are few who can
read without horror the indiscriminate slaughter which
he not only permitted, but encouraged and authorised.
The single defence that can be offered for his cruelty
122 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
was its necessity. He had undertaken the task of paci-
fymg Ireland ; and this task could only be accom-
plished by the exhibition of a power calculated to over-
awe and subdue the unruly elements which then every-
where raged in that country. Cromwell knew this.
He knew that nothing short of an example of resistless
determination and might could effect his purpose.
This is his own excuse ; and in war it is and must
ever be held a valid excuse. Severity is, then, truly
mercy in the end. As he himself says, " Truly, I
believe this bitterness " (putting every man of the gar-
rison of Drogheda to death) " will save much effusion
of blood, through the goodness of God." One shudders
indeed to read of the goodness of God in connection with
such carnage, and still more to read the explanations
which he gives more at length in his communication
to the Speaker of the Commons. " It was set upon
some of our hearts that a great thing should be done,
not by power or might, but by the Spirit of God. And
is it not so clearly? That which caused your men to
storm so courageously, it was the Spirit of God, who
gave your men courage. " Such words breathe more than
the vengeance of the old Theocracy against the Canaan-
ites ; and it was the same spirit, no doubt, that animated
these Puritan warriors, and made them march to siege
and battle with Bible watchwords in their mouths,
and the fury of unholy wrath in their hearts. There
is nothing to be said in defence of the spirit from any
Scriptural point of view. Every such defence must pro-
ceed upon utterly mistaken grounds ; but if the spirit
cannot be defended, the policy which employed it, and
made it subservient, not merely to the physical subju-
gation, but the moral ordering of a kingdom, may be
excused, and even vindicated.
CROMWELL. 123
In the course of nine months, Ireland was all but
subdued, and Cromwell, leaving the completion of
the work to Ireton, hastened back to London in con-
nection with the pressing state of matters in Scotland.
There Puritanism had renewed the alliance with Roy-
alty. Charles II. had taken, or professed to take, the
Covenant ; and the Scottish nation, with its religious
conscience thus dubiously quieted, had armed itself to
maintain his rights, and set up again the fabric of
sovereign authority in the two kingdoms. The exist-
ence of the Commonwealth was seriously threatened,
and a blow must be struck immediately before the
threatening evil spread into England. Cromwell was
the only man to strike this blow. He and the Council,
indeed, professed to urge the command upon Fairfax.
It is difficult to suppose that he could have been sin-
cere in this ; yet we need not suppose that he merely
acted a part.'"' His real intention, probably, was to
bring Fairfax to a point ; to force him either to an
active service, which he knew was far from congenial
to him, or to compel him to give up his commission — a
result which he accomplished. He set out for Scotland,
for the first time, " Captain-general and commander-
in-chief of all the forces raised, or to be raised, by au-
thority of ParKament, within the Commonwealth of
England."
No part of Cromwell's career is more exciting, pic-
turesque, and instructive as to his character, than his
Scottish campaign. His long letters to the clergy ;
the zeal and effect with which he criticises their argu-
ments, and assails their position ; his respect for the
religious earnestness opposed to him, and yet his
* Ludlow, in his sneering, deprecatory way, saj^s, " Crcmwell acted
his part so to the life, that I really thought he wished Fairfax to go."
124 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
scorn for its narrowness ; the wisdom of many of
his remarks on Christian liberty and Church policy,
are all deeply interesting. Presbyterianism then,
and always has, shown but a slight capacity to see
through its own formulse to the living truth beyond.
With what smiling yet strong irony does the great
soldier try to raise it to a higher point of view ! Ad-
dressing the " Commissioners of the Kirk," he asks,
" Is it therefore infallibly agreeable to the word of
God all that you say ? I beseech you in the bowels of
Christ, tliink it possible you may be mistaken. Precept
may be upon precept, line may be upon line, and yet the
word of the Lord may be to some a word of judgment,
that they may fall backward and be broken, and be
snared and taken." * Again, a month later, in a letter
to "the Governor of Edinburgh Castle," who had
written on behalf of the ministers : " Are you troubled
that Christ is preached ? Is preaching so exclusively
your function? Is it against the Covenant? Away
with the Covenant if this be so ! . . . Where do you
find in the Scriptures a ground to warrant such an
assertion, that preaching is exclusively your function ?
Though an approbation from men hath order in it, and
may do well, yet he that hath no better warrant than
that hath none at all. Approbation is an act of con-
veniency in respect of order — not of necessity to give
faculty to preach the gospel. Yoiir pretended fear,
lest error should step in, is like the man wJio woidd keep
all the ivine out of the country, lest men should he drunk." "f
Yet again, in the same letters : " We look at ministers
as helpers of, not lords over, God's people. I appeal
to their consciences whether any person, trying their
doctrines and dissenting, shall not incur the censure of
* Carlyle, ii. "20. t C,\RLTLE, ii. 64.
CROMWELL. 125
sectary. And what is this hut to deny Christians their
liberty, and assume the infallible chair ? What doth
he, lohom lue would not be likened unto, do more than
this ? "
Such is the intellectual and theological side of
Cromwell, on his second memorable visit to Scotland.
The militaiy side is not less impressive. Of all his
military achievements, that of his retreat to Dun-
bar, and subsequent battle, is perhaps the greatest, if
for no other reason than because, for the first time in
the course of his conquering career, we see him in
straits through which he cannot get " almost without
a miracle." " The enemy hath blocked up our way,"
he writes, '"' " and our lying here daily consumeth our
men, who fall sick beyond imagination." But the force
of his genius rises with the occasion. " Our spirits are
comfortable, praised be the Lord, though our present
condition be as it is. . . . Whatever become of us, it
will be Avell for you to get what forces you can to-
gether." Nowhere does he seem more the hero. No
scene in all his life is at once more striking and
simple in its grandeur — the half-famished troops, lying
weary and exhausted with their fruitless marches
in search of an enemy that had refused to fight them,
but had hung in their retreat, with a harassing tena-
city, on their rear ; their turning to bay in the narrow
corner (" the pass at Copperspath ") in which they
were hemmed, with tlie hills before them covered by
the enemy, and the sea behind ; the night of storm
and " hail clouds ; " the quiet magnanimity of his let-
ter to Haselrig ; the eagerness with which he watched
the Scottish troops descend from their vantage-ground ;
* Letter to Sir A. Haselrig at Newcastle, dated " Dunbar, '2d Sep-
tember 1G50."
126 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
the prayer and the pealing watchword — " The Lord of
Hosts" — as it rang through the English ranks in the
morning; the terrible charge upon the half-sleeping
and drenched Scotch; and the cry which Hodgson
heard burst from him as they first wavered and fled,
" They run ! I profess they run ! "
The Scotch, after their defeat at Dunbar, rallied at
Stirling; but their councils were divided, and their
strength effectually broken. Some of them, irrespec-
tive of the Covenant, were disposed to embrace the
Royal cause. Others, in zeal for the Covenant, dis-
trusted the King and his special adherents. Tliere
were, in fact, three parties : a right, left, and middle —
a Eoyal, Eeligious, and Eoyalist-religious, or official
party — Malignants, Whigs or Remonstrants, and
" .Kesolutioners " — so called from their having carried
tlirough the Parliament and Assembly a set of resolu-
tions for the admission of Malignants to fight in the
general cause of covenanted Royalty. It was a great
satisfaction to Cromwell that, the genuine Covenanters
or "Whigs having been dispersed in the west by Major
Whalley, he was left to fight it out with the two other
parties, for whom he had comparatively little respect.
His visits to Linlithgow and Glasgow, where Mr
Zachary Boyd " railed on his soldiers to their very
face in the High Church ; "* his correspondence with
tlie heads of the Remonstrant party; his siege of
Edinburgh Castle and its surrender, fill up the events
of the year. Then follow, his somewhat serious illness
during the winter in his old lodging, the " Earl of
Murrie's house in the Canigate;" his second visit to
Glasgow; his church-going, and personal conferences
with the clergy, who hesitated not in his presence to
* Baillie, iii. 119.
CKOMWELL. 127
"give a fair testimony against the Sectaries;"* re-
newed operations hither and thither in the spring
(1651) near to Stirling, and across to Burntisland ; the
breaking of the Eoyalist army from Stirling, and its
march into England ; his march in pursuit, and the
great and decisive victory of Worcester on the 3d of
September, the anniversary of the day of Dunbar.
The battle of Worcester was, as he wrote, his " crown-
ing mercy;" "as stiff a contest for four or five hours
as ever I have seen." The Scots fought with desperate
bravery, but their efforts were of no avail. The star
of Cromwell was in the ascendant. The passion of a
great strength which had never been broken in battle,
was upon him, and carried him resistlessly to victory.
Carlyle says grandly, " The small Scotch army, be-
girdled with overpowering force, and cut off from help
or reasonable hope, storms forth in fiery pulses, horse
and foot ; charges now on this side of the river, and
now on that ; can on no side prevail ; Cromwell recoils
a little, but only to rally and return irresistible ; the
small Scotch army is on every side driven in again ;
its fiery pulsings are but the struggle of death ; agonies
as of a lion coiled in the folds of a boa." f
Cromwell returned in triumph to London after an
absence of fifteen months, during which he had more
securely established his power over the army, and en-
hanced his fame by two great battles. It is not to
be supposed that he and the other chiefs of the army
would be more deferential to the " Eump" of a Parlia-
ment (little more than a hundred members) still sit-
ting in Westminster, than they had been to the same
assembly wlien in comparative strength and consider-
ation. On its part the Parliament was sufficiently
* Baillie, 1G5. t Caulyle, ii. 142.
128 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
deferential, four of its most dignified members Laving
been commissioned to meet the conqueror at Ayles-
bury with congratulations, and to accompany him as
he entered London amid the obeisance of Lord Presi-
dent and Council, Sheriffs, and Mayors, and the shout-
ing of the multitude. " In the midst of all," White-
locke says, " Cromwell carried himself with much affa-
bility." Afterwards, indeed, his bearing was criticised.
His chaplain, Hugh Peters, told Ludlow that he dis-
cerned in his master on the occasion, a certain inward
elevation and excitement of conscious greatness, as if he
already saw within his grasp the crown and sovereignty
of England — so much so, that he (the chaplain) had said
to himself, " This man will be king of England yet."
Beyond all doubt, Cromwell returned from his great
successes in Ireland and Scotland, if not a changed
man, yet with far higher and clearer aims for himself
and his country. It was impossible that he should
not feel how the reins of power had been gathered into
his hand, and that if the nation was to be settled after
its long and exhausting conflicts, he must himself
undertake the settlement of it. It is vain for any
to talk of unprincipled craft and ambition at this
stage of his career.* Circumstances had made him
first the hero, and now the virtual sovereign of his
country.
Still, for nearly two years, he remained without any
special assumption of sovereignty, while Parliament
was engaged in endless debates and negotiations as to
its dissolution, and the arrangements for a new repre-
sentative. Such debates had commenced from the
time of the King's execution, but gone to sleep during
the Scottish campaign. Cromwell's return brought
* As Guizot even in his latest biography does.
CROMWELL. 129
them to life again, and by a majority tlie "Eump"
agreed to its dissolution three years hence.
Many conferences were held in the mean time, at
Cromwell's house at Whitehall, with the chiefs of the
army and divers of the Parliamentary leaders, as to
the order of government ; some, especially the law-
yers, arguing in favour of a limited monarchy under
the King's son— others, with almost all the officers of
the army, declaring in favour of a republic. While
these negotiations were proceeding in London, and the
soldiers of the Commonwealth were resting from their
stern struggles, and enjoying the excitement of politi-
cal discussion and petitioning, its sailors, under Blake
and Dean, were achieving glorious triumphs over the
Dutch,* and establishing its supremacy on the seas and
throughout Europe. The " Eump " calmly took the
triumphant course of events as its own, and seemed
less disinclined than before to resign its position and
influence. The army became impatient, and petitioned
more vehemently; conferences increased at the Lord
General's house. Parliament at length resolved on
instant dissolution — a whole year earlier than it had
first intended ; but the bill by which the members of
the "Eump" proposed to carry their resolution into
effect, was clogged with such conditions as should
secure their own return to the new Parliament, and
their effectual influence over its composition, f Such
a proposal deeply incensed Cromwell and the army,
and he determined to prevent its passing.
The act by which he accomplished this was one of
the most questionable, if also one of the most scenic
and daring in the upward course of his ambition. Its
external features stamped themselves vividly on the
* March 1653. + Guizot's Cromwell, 348, vol. i.
I
130 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
memories of those who witnessed it, and were long
afterwards remembered with a mixture of fear and
laughter.
The Lord General was busy in consultation on the
ever-renewed subject of the government of the country,
with the officers of the army and certain members of
Parliament, waiting for others who had promised to
come, on the 20th April (1653), when, instead of the
expected members, a message came that the House
was intent on hurrying through its bill. Deeply
moved, Cromwell is yet represented as veiy reluctant
to act, when Colonel Ingoldsby arrived, exclaiming,
" If you mean to do anything decisive, you have no
time to lose." Vane was earnestly pressing the
measure to a vote, notwithstanding Harrison's dis-
suasions. It seemed likely that he should succeed in
his object. Cromwell at length made up his mind
and hastened to Westminster, taking a troop of mus-
keteers with him from his own regiment. These he
disposed to suit his purpose, and then entered him-
self and " sat down as he used to do in an ordinary
place." His appearance and the cut of his clothes, as
on former occasions, were all remembered. He was
" clad in plain black clothes and grey worsted stock-
ings;" and the old passion and fervour, as when he had
some great work to do, gleamed in his eye. For a
while he listened with apparent calmness to the de-
bate. Vane was still speaking, and as he urged the
immediate passage of the bill, Cromwell beckoned to
Harrison, saying, " This is the time, I must do it." On
Harrison's representation, however, he still remained
for a quarter of an hour, until Vane ceased speaking,
and the question was about to be put from the
chair, " That this bill do now pass," when he rose, put
CROMWELL. 131
down his hat, and addressed the House, at first in
a measured and rather complimentary manner, till,
waxing hot with the burning thoughts that had been
long on his mind, he changed his tone, and vehe-
mently reproached them with their injustice, delays,
and self-interest. "Your time is come," he exclaimed,
as his violence increased and almost mastered him,*
"your time is come, the Lord hath done with you;
He has chosen other instruments for the carrying on of
His work that are more worthy." Several members -}-
interposed, " but he would suffer none but himself to
speak." At length Sir Peter Wentworth found voice,
and spoke for a little, upbraiding Cromwell for his
unbecoming language and ingratitude as a trusted
servant of the Commonwealth. But this only further
kindled his passion, and, thrusting his hat upon his
head, and leaping into the centre of the floor, he cried,
" Come, come, we have had enough of this — I'll put
an end to your prating." As he spoke, he stamped
upon the floor and beckoned to Harrison, " Call them
in," when the doors flew open and his musketeers
made their appearance. " You are no Parliament," he
exclaimed, as he wildly walked up and down, flinging
taunts at the members all round. " I say you are no
Parliament ; begone, give way to honester men. Some
of you are drunkards," and he looked on Mr Chal-
loner. " Some of you are adulterers," and his eye
searched poor Sir Peter Wentworth and Henry Marty n.
He walked up to the table on which lay the mace
carried before the Speaker, " "What shall we do with
this bauble ? " he said ; " take it away. It's you that
* He spoke, says Ludlow, " with so much jjassion and discomposure
of mind as if he had been distracted."
i" Vane and Martyn.
132 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
have forced me to tins ; " "I have sought the Lord
night and day that He would rather slay me than put
me up on the doing of this ; but now begone." One by
one they rose and left — a special shaft being aimed at
Sir Harry Vane as he ventured some further remon-
strance on departure. " Sir Harry Vane — Sir Harry
Vane — ^the Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane."
The house was cleared, the door locked, and the key
and the mace carried away ; and so ended for the time
the great Parliament of England, so glorious in its be-
ginning, so feeble and ridiculous in its close.
This may be said to mark the conclusion of the
second period of Cromwell's career. Hitherto he has
appeared first as the Puritan patriot and man of the
people, and then as the great and successful warrior
of the Commonwealth. The transformation has been
sufficiently astonishing, from the farmer of St Ives to
the conqueror of Ireland and the victor of Dunbar and
Worcester. He is still to show himself in another and
perhaps higher character ; but before proceeding, we
may pause briefly to characterise his military genius.
In no other great hero, not even in Alexander or
Napoleon, do we recognise a more intuitive military
genius, more exact appreciation of the difficulties to
be overcome, more prompt and skilful boldness in
meeting them, more decision in council, more terrible
energy in action, above all, more quiet consciousness of
strength, more effective control of himself and others,
till at the right point he could apply all his resources
and bear down opposition with an overwhelming mas-
tery. The campaigns of other warriors, as Napoleon's
early career in Italy, may seem to be more dashing
and brilliant, but they are not really more glorious.
They may dazzle more by their eclat, but they do
CROMWELL. 133
uot show, in a greater measure, patience combined
with energy, forethought with swiftness, and rapidity
with thoroughness of execution. In tlie liigliest mili-
tary genius there must always be a sublime faith
amounting to passion. Mere calculations, and mere
discipline and science, may achieve great victories,
especially in modern times, but will never inspire
with enthusiasm great armies, and mould them into
conquerors. The passion of a fixed idea can alone do
this ; and Cromwell was animated from first to last
by the highest form of this passion. His faith was
no mere intensity of selfish trust — no mere personal
ambition ; it was a faith in the God of battles, a fixed
devotion to the Divine. The same theocratic consci-
ousness which sustained David in his wars with the
Philistines, sustained Cromwell in his wars with the
cavaliers. He was the servant of God, his soldiers
were the people of God — " the godly party." So, be-
yond doubt, he thought. It was " principle" that
moved him and moved them to engage in the quarrel
— they made " conscience " of their cause ; and it was
this lofty and intense consciousness of the Divine
which made the highest, the really prevailing element
of that military genius, which, from guarding with
stern faithfulness the eastern associated counties with
his troop of Ironsides, carried our hero in triumph to
Marston Moor, and from Marston to Naseby, and from
Naseby to Drogheda, Dunbar, and Worcester.
But henceforth it is no longer as warrior but as
statesman that we contemplate him. With the crown-
ing mercy of Worcester his military career was ended,
and a new career of patriotic statesmanship opened to
him. The difficulties of the country, the difficulties
of his position, were immense; but he had counted the
134 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
cost, and lie was not tlie man to flincli from the posi-
tion and the work to which Providence had called him.
There are few pages of history more nobly pathetic —
more deeply tragical than the struggle on which he
now entered, and which he sustained for five years.
This concluding period of his life may not, indeed, at
first sight seem a struggle, but rather a triumph. Our
attention is apt to be fixed by the prosperous aspects
of the Protectorate, the power which he exercised in
Europe as the head of the Protestant cause, and the
glory which he everywhere gave to the name of Eng-
land among the nations ; but his position was, never-
theless, one of struggle almost to the last. The history
of his Parliaments and the study of his speeches are
enough to show this. He desired to govern constitu-
tionally after all that happened, and this was no easy,
nay, it was an impossible task in the circumstances.
He relished power, but he hated injustice. He would
have no interest oppressed, not even the Jews or
Quakers, whom all stronger sects alike delighted to
persecute. He was thoroughly tolerant in so far as
he could elicit any response to his own tolerant spirit
from the contending parties.* He desired, therefore, to
make the basis of his government as broad as possible,
compatible with the interests of religion and the cause
for which he had fought. He aimed, in short, to con-
struct in a liberal spirit the forms of the old constitu-
tion. But it was just the retribution of his career that
he could not do this. The steps by which he had
risen to power had so shattered that constitution ; his
own position, however just in a sense deeper than all
* " If the poorest Christian, the most mistaken Christian, shall desire
to live peaceably and. quietly under you : I say, if any shall desire but
to lead a life of godliness and honesty, let him be protected." — Speeches,
Carlyle, ii.
CROMWELL. 135
constitutions, was so autocratic — so arbitrary and in-
definite— that it was not possible for liim to re-establish
the powers which had been cast down, and restore tliem
to quiet and efficient worlving.
His first effort at statesmanship was the famous As-
sembly of Puritan notables, derisively know as Bare-
bones Parliament. Two days after the dismissal of the
"Eump," he published a "Declaration of the Lord
General and his Council of Officers," explaining the
step which he had been forced to take, and the grounds
of it ; and intimating that he was about to call to-
gether an assembly of " known persons, men fearing
God, and of approved integrity, who should see to the
settling of the Commonwealth." The manner in which
this assembly was • collected was sufficiently singular.
The Independent ministers throughout the country
were to take the sense of their congregations, and to
send up to the Lord General and his officers, lists of
those whom they judged "qualified to manage a trust
in the ensuing government — men able, loving truth,
fearing God, and hating covetousness." From these
lists Cromwell and his officers in council'"' selected one
hundred and thirty-nine representatives, and to these,
summonses were sent to appear at Whitehall on the
4th of July 1653. Only two to whom summonses
were sent did not appear.
No assembly, perhaps, ever essayed a more difficult
task than this assembly of Puritan notables — none has
ever been more vilified and ridiculed. Praise God Bare-
bones, " the leather merchant in Fleet Street," has been
historically embalmed as its symbol of contempt ; and
yet, as Carlyle says, with a scorn outmatching all the
cavalier ridicule which has been lavished on it, " Praise
* New council.
136 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADEKS.
(jod, thougli lie deal in leather, and lias a name that
can be misspelt, is in every respect a worthy and good
man — the son of pious parents — himself a man of piety
and understanding and weight, and even of consider-
able private capital — my witty flunkey friend !" — as
his scorn explodes in a burst. For all this, and not-
withstanding Mr Carlyle (whose fealty to his hero, and
admiration of his actions, nothing can move), there
were plainly elements of ridicule about this assembly.
The very manner in which it was collected must have
brought together disproportionate and ludicrous ele-
ments— men. God-fearing and honest, it might be, with
a heart to do their country good, abolish its abuses,
and re-establish order and peace within its bounds,
yet men also more remarkable for piety than policy —
more fitted to legislate in their respective parishes
than in the Parliament of England, and presenting,
in the nature of the case, many external features
moving to mirth rather than to respect, and to a sus-
picion of wide incongruity between their capacity and
their aims. Such an impression has certainly stamped
itself on the national mind, and perpetuated itself in
an inveterate association of ridicule surrounding the
" Barebones Parliament."
Cromwell's speech to this assembly is the first of
the now well-known series. He told them, that by rea-
son of the " scantiness of the room and the heat of the
weather" he would "contract himself;" but he spoke,
nevertheless, for more than two hours. He reminded
them of all the remarkable events by which, since the
opening of the civil war, they had been brought to the
point at which they now stood. " Those strange turn-
ings and windings of Providence — those very great
appearances of God in crossing and thwarting the pur-
CKOMWELL. 137
poses of men, that He miglit raise up a poor and con-
temptible company of men into wonderful success."
He reviewed the recent conflict of the army and Par-
liament, and defended the course which he had taken
in dissolving the latter as a necessity laid upon him for
the defence of those " liberties and rights" for which he
and others had fought. Necessity was his great argu-
ment, and his only valid argument. " It has come by
way of necessity — ^by the way of the wise providence
of God through weak hands," he urged. He then
counselled them to tolerance in memorable words,*
and to owning their call. " You have been passive in
coming hither, being called. Therefore own your call !
I think it may be truly said that there never was a
Supreme Authority consisting of such a body, above
one hundred and forty, I believe ; never such a body
that came into the supreme authority before under
such a notion as this, in such a way of owning God,
and being owned by Him/'-f-
The assembly, among its first acts, assumed the
name, insignia, and privileges of Parliament. It also
manifested great activity in practical measures of re-
form, collection of taxes, and consolidation of the
revenue ; but so soon as it essayed the higher task of
reforming the church and the law, it fell into intermin-
able divisions. Opposition assailed it from all sides ;
and the more moderate, alarmed and wearied at the
wild projects of the extreme gospel party, led by Har-
rison, tendered their resignation, and the assembly was
broken up.
Cromwell was moved by this first legislative failure ;
but he took courage. He and his officers adopted more
decided measures than they had yet done to strengthen
* Quoted in foregoing note. t Carlyle, ii. 211.
138 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
liis power. They met and drew up an " Instrument
of Government," conferring upon him the office of
Lord Protector of the Gommomvcalth of England, Scot-
land, and Ireland. This was on the 12tli of December
1653 ; and on the 16th Cromwell was formally in-
stalled in the " Chancery Court in Westminster Hall."
The ceremony was simple but impressive : he was
dressed in a " rich but plain dark suit — black velvet,
with cloak of the same ; about his hat a broad band of
gold." Mr Lochier, his chaplain, gave an exhortation.
Lambert presented him, on his knees, with a civic
sword, while he laid aside his own, denoting his ex-
change of military for civil rule.
The " Instrument of Government " by which Crom-
well now ruled was in many respects a wise and
liberal measure. It made provision for the calling of a
new Parliament on a broader and fairer basis of repre-
sentation than hitherto.* It decreed that without the
sanction of Parliament no taxes could be raised, and
that its laws were to have effect within twenty-one
days, whether they received the assent of the Protector
or not. Further, Parliament was not to be prorogued
without its own consent during the iirst five months
of its sitting ; and all officers of state were to hold
their appointment subject to its approval. All this
sufficiently proves how eager Cromwell was to rest his
power on the old forms of the constitution, liberalised
in the spirit of the great conflict which had closed.
He was not disposed, as afterwards he declared, on
any account to aliandon his cause and the position to
which he had been raised, which he considered neces-
* It antedated the reform of Parliament, in short, by more than a
hundred and fifty years, cutting off small and "rotten" boroughs, and
giving members to large and growing towns that had recently sprung up.
CROMWELL. 139
sary for the vindication of this cause — " he would be
rolled in blood in his grave rather ; " but supposing
his position granted, he would far rather govern consti-
tutionally than otherwise.
Cromwell was no sooner installed than he set him-
self, in conjunction with his Council, earnestly to the
task of government. His most urgent and important
work was to introduce some order into the confused re-
ligious influences surrounding him, whose ferment had
borne him on triumphantly to power, but whose mere
anarchic developments no man was less disposed to
countenance, even if they had not directly provoked
his hostility by their attacks upon his position. He
prized Christian liberty in his heart, and freely con-
ceded it to all peaceable citizens ; but he had no
hesitation in putting the rein upon men " who forgot
all rules of law and nature," and made " Christ and the
Spirit of God a cloak for all villany and spurious ap-
X^rehensions." So he quietly checked the excesses of
the Anabaptist leveller, Feak, and his colleagues ; * and
despatched Harrison, the head of the Fifth-monarchy
men, to his home in Staffordshire. What to do, how-
ever, with the general ecclesiastical arrangements of
the kingdom, was a more difficult question. Episco-
pacy was abolished ; Presbytery had not taken its
place ; and great disorder and much inefficiency in the
Christian ministry prevailed throughout the country.
Cromwell very wisely did not attempt to set up a con-
sistent form of church government. He did not
trouble himself with the mere machinery of Christian
instruction ; but he determined to carry a thorough
reform into the spirit and character of the instruction
itself He did not care particularly whether the
* See Feak's message to him. Caulyle, p. 234.
140 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
clergy were Presbyterians, or Independents, or even
Anabaptists — (Episcopacy, as identified witli malig-
nancy and royalism, was not embraced in his system) —
so that they were faithful, peaceful, Christian men.
With the view of securing such a result, he appointed
a commission for the trial of public preachers, com-
posed of the most distinguished Puritan clergy, with
certain laymen added to them. He further appointed,
in the same spirit, commissioners in each county to
inquire into " scandalous, ignorant, and inefficient "
ministers, and have their places supplied with faithful
men. Arbitrary as such commissions were in their
constitution, there exists undoubted evidence of the
fairness and tenderness as well as thoroughness with
which they executed their task, and the widely benefi-
cial influence which they exerted.* Able and serious
preachers who lived a godly life, of what " tolerable
opinion soever they were," multiplied throughout the
land, so that many thousands of souls blessed God for
what had been done.t
The foreign relations of the country were at the same
time triumphantly ordered by him, and his power uni-
versally acknowledged abroad. Treaties were concluded
with Holland, Denmark, and Sweden. The Dutch,
humbled Ijy the splendid victories of Blake, were glad
to conclude a peace. France and Spain sent embassies,
and so far acknowledged the new government.
But the great test of the goverment was still to come.
A new Parliament, elected on the reformed basis of re-
presentation laid down in the " Instrument," met on the
* Baxter's Unprejudiced Evidence.
•\- No doubt, also, hardships were inflicted under such a system, which,
in its natural arbitrariness, could not fail of such results. Fuller's case
has been often cited.
CROMWELL. 141
3d of September ] 654, tlie anniversary of tlie day of
Dunbar. It was to be a " free Parliament," as Crom-
well liimself said, or at least as free a Parliament as
could then be in England. Catholics were excluded,
and those who had served in the late war against the
Commonwealth ; but otherwise. Republicans and Pres-
byterians, as well as adherents of the government, were
freely chosen. There were to be 460 members — 400
for England, 80 for Scotland, and 30 for Ireland. The
Parliament had scarcely met, when it showed symp-
toms of disaffection, Cromwell addressed it long and
powerfully. His three speeches to this Parliament
are his greatest oratorical efforts, less involved and
confused in their outline than his speeches commonly
are, more heated with genuine feeling, and rising to
easier and higher touches of eloquence. In the first,
he impressed upon them the importance of their meet-
ing, and the great end of it, " healing and settling.''
He then described the wild religious fanaticism which
he had been obliged to put down, and the measures of
reform which the government, himself, and his Council
liad accomplished. He narrated how he had made peace
with Swedeland, with the Danes, and with the Dutch,
and how he was in treaty with France. The whole
speech was luminous with political wisdom, and ably
designed to smooth into practical working order the
diverse tempers before him.
He had miscalculated, however, the men with whom
he had to deal. Instead of setting themselves to the
quiet work of legislation on the assumed basis of the
government which had called them together, they set
themselves to discuss the validity of this government,
and the question of the " Instrument " by which it was
constituted. This refractory and captious spirit roused
142 ENGLISH PURITAIJISM AND ITS LEADERS.
Cromwell to instant action. He had them summoned
to the " painted chamber," and addressed them again
at length, above all insisting that the government was
settled in its "fundamentals," and that these were be-
yond tlieir question. This truly grand speech contains
the clearest enunciation of his great principle of reli-
gious liberty,* and is touched here and there with a
noble tenderness of feeling. " There is, therefore," he
concluded, " something to be offered to you ; a promise
of reforming as to circumstantials, and agreeing in the
substance and fundamentals — that is to say, in the form
of government now settled." They were to be required
to give their assent and subscription to this promise
and agreement, as the condition of their continuing to
sit in Parliament.
The more stern of the Eepublican leaders — Bradshaw,
and Scott, and Haselrig — refused the subscription, and
quitted London. A majority, however, acceded to the
condition, and began anew the work of legislation ;
but they made little of it. ^Vliile admitting the fun-
damental article of the " Instrument " of government,
they quibbled over the details, and, by the end of their
five months, they had made no progress in voting
supplies or reforming circumstantials. Accordingly
they received their dismissal, in a speech flaming high
with a proud resentment, that they had been unjust to
him, and insensible to the great opportunity offered
them of benefiting their country. Some had spoken of
his creating necessities that he might exalt himself
and his family. Such a charge brought down the
whole thunder of his wrath. " I say this, not only to
this assembly, but to the world, that the man liveth
not who can come to me, and charge me with having
* Carltle, ii. 298.
CROMWELL. 143
in these great revolutions made necessities. I chal-
lenge even all that fear God. And as God hath said,
' My glory I will not give to another,' let men take
heed, and be twice advised how they call His revolu-
tions, the things of God, and His workings of things
from one period to another — how, I say, they call them
necessities of man's creation."
This Parliament, beyond doubt, was a great disap-
pointment to Cromwell. It destroyed his hopes of
constitutional government ; it served, by its captious
stubbornness and disaffection, to revive everywhere
the spirit of discontent ; it proved to him his weak-
ness in the midst of his power. He felt bitterly that
he could not set up what he had cast down. His own
faction he might maintain, but the old forms of the
constitution — free and settled in their working — with
which he desired to surround himself, seemed intract-
able in his hands. All his activity was needed, im-
mediately on the dissolution of Parliament, to crush
the plots, Eoyalist and Eepublican, which had gathered
new life during its sittings, and were everywhere ready
to burst forth. Ludlow and Alured, in Ireland, Over-
ton and others, in Scotland, needed to be looked
after. Fleetwood was instructed to deal with the one,
and Monk with the others. Various other leaders
of the "Anabaptist levelling party," Harrison, Carew,
and Lord Grey of Groby, were seized and confined in
various prisons. With these, his old allies, he dealt
as tenderly as possible, consistently with the safety
of his position and government. With Penruddock,
and the leaders of the Ptoyalist insurrections in the
north and west, he dealt far more severely. They
expiated their rashness on the scaffold ; or, what was
almost worse, they were shipped to the West Indies
144 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
and sold as slaves. Everywhere lie crushed out the
embers of disaffectiou with a firm yet considerate
hand. Viewed in the light of his own postulate as
to his position, his acts were necessary, and by no
means cruel, as a whole ; viewed in any other light,
they must, of course, be judged arbitrary, and cruelly
oppressive.
Now for some time he remained more absolute in
his single authority than ever. Throughout the coun-
try he established a species of military despotism — his
famous system of major-generals. It was divided
into districts, and a military chief appointed in each,
whose duty it was to put down all anarchy, and keep
the Eoyalists quiet, by levying heavy fines upon them
for the support of the State. The system was an
unmitigated tyranny, both politic and social. Nothing
can be said for it except its stern necessity as a tem-
porary provision for the maintenance of order. The
peace it secured, and the confidence it re-established,
are said to have proved in many respects beneficial.
Having thus quieted the aspect of affairs at home,
he had leisure to direct and extend to still more splen-
did results than hitherto his foreign policy. Identify-
ing himself with the interests of free religious opinion,
and proudly vindicating them as the champion of
Protestantism, he assumed towards foreign nations an
attitude of controlling influence. It is at this time
we contemplate him, along with Milton, writing on
behalf of the persecuted Piedmontese, and refusing to
sign the treaty with France till it had promised to see
with him to the rights of these poor people. He or-
dained a day of fasting and a public collection to be
made for them, while Milton represented their case in
letters to all the Protestant powers.
CROMWELL, 145
The same principle wliicli made Cromwell thus
stand forth as the representative of Protestantism in
Europe, plunged him into war with Spain, as the
natural enemy of Protestant England. This is the
express ground on which he himself defended the
Spanish war. " The Spaniard is your enemy; and
your enemy, as I tell you, naturally, by that anti-
pathy which is in him,* and also providentially, and
this in divers respects." The armament which he
fitted out against their West India possessions, while
it failed in its substantial objects, took possession of
Jamaica, which has ever since remained a British
possession. This, at the time supposed to be a barren
conquest, was the only trophy of an expedition which
had evidently been one of great interest and hopes
to him. It is the single failure of his career, and he
resented it by throwing the commanders of the expe-
dition into the Tower on their return home.
Strengthened by the reduction of his enemies at
home, and by the glory of his power abroad, Cromwell
was induced once more to summon a Parliament for
the 17th of September 1656. After adressing them
(as usual) in a lengthened speech -f- explaining the
position of affairs, and the grounds on which he was
* Elsewhere, in the same speech : " Why, truly your great enemy is
the Spaniard. He is a natural enemy. He is naturally so ; he is
naturally so throughout — by reason of that enmity that is in him against
whatsoever is of God."
i" The conclusion of this speech is in his grandest strain ; as, indeed,
the whole is wonderful — " rude, massive, genuine, like a block of un-
beaten gold." In the end he says, — "If God give you a spirit of re-
formation, you will prevent this nation from ' turning again ' to these
fooleries [' horse-races, cock-fightings, and the like ! ' which had been
abolished as having been made the occasion of Royalist plots, &c.] ;
and what will the end be ?— Comfort and blessing. Then INIercy and
Truth shall meet together. There is a great deal of ' truth ' among
professors, but very little ' mercy.' They are ready to cut the throats
K
146 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
prepared to maintain the government, lie purged them
according to a rule which had been agreed upon be-
tween him and his Council. A hundred members out
of the four hundred were prevented from taking their
seats. This violent act, only justifiable, like many-
others, by the necessities of his position, excited great
indignation ; but it was carried quietly through ; and
Haselrig (his old friend), and Ashley Cooper, and
other disturbing spirits, sent back to their homes to
nurse their discontent in private.
Parliament thus purged and approved, showed itself
more subservient to his wishes. It wasted its time,
indeed, in fruitless and absurd discussions as to the
opinions of a poor wandering fanatic of the name of
Naylor, and the punishment with which he should be
visited — evidence enough how far it was from appreci-
ating those noble expressions of the doctrine of tolera-
tion which he addressed to it. But at length, after some
five months' work and many negotiations, it drew up a
new "Instrument of Government," by which it provided
for the Protector assuming the office of king, and appoint-
or one another. But when we are brought into the right way, we shall
be merciful as well as orthodox : and we know who it is that .saith, ' If
a man could speak with the tongues of men and angels, and yet want
that, he is but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.'
" Therefore I beseech you, in the name of God, set your hearts to this
work. And if you set your hearts to it, then will you sing Luther's
Psalm [the 4(ith, of which Luther's hymn, Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott,
is a par ai:)h rase]. This is a rare jDsalm for a Christian !— and if he set
his heart open, and can approve it to God, we shall hear him say, ' God
is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble.' If
Pope and Spaniard, and devil and all, set themselves, though they
should ' compass us like bees,' as it is in hundred-and-eighteenth
psalm, yet in the name of the Lord we should destroy them. And, as
it is in this psalm of Luther's, ' We will not fear, though the earth be
removed, and though the mountains be carried into the middle of the
sea ; thougli the waters thereof roar and be troubled ; though the
mountains shake with the swelling thereof.' "
CROMWELL. 147
ing his successor. The interviews and debates to which
tliis proposal led, the strange and apparently inconsis-
tent veerings in Cromwell's own mind, make a deeply
interesting but perplexing study. Suffice it to say that
they ended in his rejecting the proposal of Parliament.
On the 8th of May 1657, he finally decided not to
adopt the title of king ; and the issue was, that he was
again, and more formally, inaugurated as Protector,
amid the joyful huzzas of the people. The same Par-
liament abolished the system of major-generals; and
in the new instrument reconstituting the Protectorate,
it provided for the institvition of a House of Lords.
Piece by piece, he would fain have siUTOunded him-
self with all the old machinery of the constitution.
After an adjournment of six months, Parliament re-
assembled, and of the fifty-three Peers nominated by
Cromwell, forty appeared to take their place. Scarcely
any of the old Peers, however — not even Lord Warwick
— came. He declared that he could not sit in the same
assembly with Hewson the cobbler and Pride the dray-
man. The Protector, by reason of " some infirmities
upon him," made them but a short speech ; probably
he was somewhat despondent and hopeless. The posi-
tion of affairs was once more critical ; his own health
was failing — the old factions were noisy and gathering
strength again. The members excluded in the previous
session now professed their willingness to take the oath
of the new constitution, and there was no longer any
valid reason for insisting upon their exclusion. Hasel-
rig, one of the most persevering and violent, had been
prudently nominated by Cromwell a Peer, but he de-
clined to take his seat, except in the House of Com-
mons. He insisted upon having the oath administered
to him, and took his place in the Commons as the
148 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
leader of tlie old Kepublicans. As may be conjectured,
dissensions speedily sprang up in sucli an assembly.
Only two days after the opening of the session, a
message was sent from tlie House of Lords, inviting
the Commons to unite with them in an address to his
Highness to appoint a day of fasting and humiliation.
This was enough to kindle the embers of unappeasable
dissatisfaction. The Eepublicans fired at the title
which the so-called Peers had given themselves. " We
have no message to receive from them as Lords," they
exclaimed — "they are but a swarm from ourselves."
In vain Cromwell summoned them to attend him in the
Banqueting Hall, at Whitehall, and addressed them in
earnest and solemn words, as to the dangers that were
threatening at home and abroad, and his determination
to stand with them in the old cause — the interests of
the Commonwealth which he had sworn to maintain.
They returned, only to renew with more eagerness their
faction fight as to the title under which they should
recognise the other House ; and after a five days'
debate, they decided by a majority, not to recognise
it under the name of the House of Lords.
This decision stirred the Protector to the very depths
of his stormy nature. AVithout consulting with any
one, he went, accompanied by only a few guards, to the
House of Lords, and summoned the Commons to at-
tend him. Fleetwood, his son-in-law, here joined him,
and tried to dissuade him from his plans, which, he
urged, would take even his friends by surprise. But
laying his hand upon his breast, he swore by the living
God, that he would do it, and that they should not sit
another hour. His speech was short, and betrayed
the depth of his emotion. We feel a noble pity for
the giant bending beneath the pressure of his difficul-
CROMWELL. 149
ties, resolute not to yield, and yet unable to bear soli-
tary the heavy burden. "To be petitioned and advised
by you to undertake such a government — a burden
too heavy for any creature — certainly, I did hope that
the same men who made the frame, should make it
good unto me. I can say in the presence of God, in
comparison with whom we are but poor creeping ants
upon the earth, I would have been glad to have lived
under my woodside, to have kept a flock of sheep,
rather than undertake such a government as this."
A magnanimous pathos, surely, in this thought of his
old quiet former life at such a time ! He reproached
them with their moving the question of a " Eepublic,"
as opposed to the government already settled — with
their tampering with the army — with their even, some
of them, "listing persons by commission of Charles
Stuart," to join with any insurrection that might be
made. " And what is like to come upon this," he con-
cluded," the enemy being ready to invade us, but even
present blood and confusion ? And if this be so, I do
assign it to this cause — your not assenting to what
you did invite me by your petition and advice, as that
which might prove the settlement of the nation. And
if this be the end of your sitting, and this be your
carriage, I think it high time that an end be put to
your sitting. And I do dissolve this Pakliajment !
And let God be judge betwixt you and me."
Parliament was accordingly dismissed — its endless
debatings suddenly stifled ; but not sooner than neces-
sary ; for Koyalist discontent was everywhere active,
breaking out in ever-renewed flame. " If the session
had lasted but two or three days longer," says Har-
tlib, Milton's friend (to whom his tractate on educa-
tion was addressed), " all had been in blood, both in
150 ENGLISH PUillTANISM AND ITS LEADEKS.
city andcoiintiy, on Charles Stuart's account." Crom-
well was fully conscious of liis perils. And now, as
ever, lie took his resolutions swiftly, and followed them
up with prompt and unflinching action. Two ring-
leaders"' in the Royalist plots were seized, condemned,
and summarily executed — notwithstanding the influen-
tial connections of the one, and the earnest entreaties of
his own daughter in the case of the other. Once more
he crushed, by his terrible yet considerate vigour, his
enemies on all hands. His arms on the Continent
were at the same time triumphant. Dunkirk was
gloriously taken, and its keys deposited in his hands.
Splendid presents were exchanged between him and
Mazarin, and splendid embassies sent to him. He
received them in kingly state, rising from his throne
and advancing two steps to meet the Duke of Crequi,
' the head of the embassy, and seating him on his right
hand, while his son Eichard sat on his left. His
power seemed more consolidated, his position more
triumphant, than ever ; but in reality the shadow of
his fate was rapidly closing around him ; he was pressed
by pecuniary difiiculties ; calamity had attacked his
prosperous family ; and his own health was breaking
under the harassing burden of his anxieties.
His two eldest daughters, we have seen, were married
in the outset of his career. The eldest was by this
time married a second time, to Fleetwood (one of
Cromwell's stanchest friends), Ireton having died in
Ireland. Both his sons were busily engaged in various
duties of oftice. Henry, the younger, unlike his brother,
was of bold and enterprising spirit, and shared his
father's genius for government. His administration of
Ireland, under great difficulties, showed a vigilance,
* Sir Henry Slingsby, uncle to Lord Faulconbridge, and Dr Hewit.
CROMWELL. 151
capacity, and energy, which have won the commenda-
tion even of Eoyalist critics of the time. The impres-
sion we gatlier of Henry is almost more cavalier than
Puritan ; a dashing, gallant, and generous fellow he
appears to have been, of careless temper though strong
will, and, if Mrs Hutchison and other sources are to
be believed, somewhat dissolute.* His two younger
daughters, Mary and Trances, were now grown up.
Both, especially " the Lady Frances," suggest a pleas-
ing picture of beautiful, vivacious, and happy youth.
The one was wedded to Viscount Faulconbridge, "a
person of extraordinary parts," and strongly attached
to the Protector's person and government ; the other
to Mr Rich, grandson of the Earl of Warwick, and
heir to his estates. This last f marriage was a sub-
ject of anxiety to Cromwell. The "settlements," as
before, in the case of Eichard, were hard to make,
and yet the "little Fanny" (she was only seven-
teen) was resolved to settle. It came right in the
end, and both sisters were married within a week
of each other (November 1657). Cromwell had great
pride in all his daughters. His family feelings were
strong, and tenderly affectionate. But his heart, above
all, clung to the Lady Claypole. She was "dear
to him — very dear." It was the tragedy of his lot,
as he now seemed to stand at the pinnacle of his
power — his enemies at home and abroad crushed
and silent, and the incense of foreign flattery surround-
ing him on his perilous seat of sovereignty — to have
* See a remarkable and very interesting letter of remonstrance from
bis sister Mary (7tb Dec. 1655), wbicb suggests tbe same conclusion.
Y " And truly, I must tell you privately, they are so far engaged that
the match cannot be broken off. She, Frances, acquainted some of bis
friends with her resolution when she did it." So writes her sister Mary
to Henrv in June 1656.
152 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS,
darkness sent into his house, and the desire of his eyes
removed. The prosperous glory of his family under-
went sudden eclipse ; and, at the very height of his
fame and power, he died broken in heart, nursing
deeper than all state anxieties the sorrows of his home.
Only twelve days after the dissolution of Parlia-
ment, his son-in-law, Mr Eich, took ill and died.
Wedded only in the previous November, ]iis death
took place in February (1657-8); and the removal of
one so young and beloved, leaving a still younger
widow, cast the first shadow over his household. Only
two months after, the Earl of AVarwick, one of the
Protector's oldest and most prudent friends, followed
his young grandson to the grave. Severe as these blows
were, they did not touch him so acutely as to interfere
with his activity. He was plunged in cares of foreign
policy and negotiations with Thurloe and others. A
new Parliament, rendered imperatively necessary by
the state of the finances, was talked of; the French
embassy, with its glittering show, had to be received ;
and, amidst all, the Lord Protector bore himself with
what spirit and show of sovereign unconcern he could.
But while these State affairs were being transacted, a
deeper sorrow than he had yet known was preparing
for him. " The Manzinis and Dues de Crequi, with
their splendour and congratulations, " had scarcely
withdrawn, when all his thoughts were absorbed by
the news of the serious illness of his daughter Eliza-
beth (the Lady Claypole). Weak and invalid for some
time, he had sent her to reside at Hampton Court ; but
the internal disease under which she suffered rapidly
increased. Pain of body alternated with anxiety of
mind regarding her beloved father. " She had great suf-
ferings, and great exercises of spirit." For fourteen days
CROMWELL. ■ 153
the Protector watched by her bedside, " unable to at-
tend to any public business whatever." The stormy
world in which he had so long lived was far removed,
as he sat, during these silent days and nights, watching
the ebbing life of his darling child. " It was observed
that his sense of her outward misery in the pains she
endured took deep impression upon him."
On the 6tli of August she died, and on the 7th he
himself was reported ill in a letter of Thurloe to his
son Henry. About this time it was that he called for
the Bible, and desired them to read to him in Philip-
pians iv. 11-13. " ' Not that I speak in respect of want :
for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith
to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I
know how to abound : everywhere and in all things
I am instructed, both to be full and to be hungry,
both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things
through Christ which strengtheneth me.' This Scrip-
ture did once save my life when my eldest son* died,
which went as a dagger to my heart — indeed it did."
After this he partially recovered, and made an effort
to resume his labours. George Fox records how he
met him in these few days riding into Hampton Court
Park at the head of his life-guards ; "and, as he rode,"
says the garrulous self-conscious Quaker, " I saw and
felt a waft of death go forth against him."
On the 2-lth of August he left Hampton Court and
returned to Whitehall. A sudden visit of Ludlow to
town filled him with some disquiet, and he sent Fleet-
wood to inquire after him. He was himself again ill,
and liis disease rapidly gained ground. At length he
was confined to bed. His physicians stood around, with
sad faces, and his wife sat anxious by him. A strange
* Eobei-t (as before explained).
154 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
excitement, however, buoyed up his own heart ; and,
taking his wife's hand, he said, " I tell thee I shall not
die of this bout. I am sure I shall not." The strong
spirit was reluctant to yield ; and his chaplains fancied
that they heard the voice of God, in answer to their
prayers, saying, "He will recover." The days passed,
however, and there was no sign of recovery. On the 2d
of September, the eve of his fortunate day, he asked, in
a lucid interval of his delirious sufferings, " Is it pos-
sible to fall from grace?" " It is not possible," the min-
isters replied. "■ Then I am safe," he said, " for I know
that I Avas once in grace ; " and he poured forth an
earnest confession and prayer to God.* During the
night his voice continued to be heard in snatches of
prayer. " God is good — truly, God is good," he often
repeated. Amid the wild storm of the autumn night, -}-
the voice of the dying hero rose in these still and
grand accents. At length he muttered, when desired
to take some refreshment, "It is not my design to
drink or sleep ; but my design is to make what haste
* There are few prayers more touching, more trulj' Christian, in all
the annals of devotion. " Lord, though I am a miserable and wretched
creature, I am in covenant with Thee through grace. And I may, I
will, come to Thee for Thy people. Thou hast made me, though very
unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good, and Thee service ;
and many of them have set too high a value upon me, though others
wish and would be glad of my death. Lord, however Thou dispose of
me, continue and go on to do good for them. Give them consistency of
judgment, one heart, and mutual love ; and go on to deliver them, and
with the work of reformation ; and make the name of Christ glorious in
the world. Teach those who look too much upon Thy instrument, to
depend more upon Thyself. Pardon such as desire to trample on the
dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too. And pardon the folly
of this short prayer, even for Jesus Christ's sake. And give us a good
night, if it be Thy pleasure. Amen."
•)• " The usual representation is here followed, which makes the night
of the 2d of September (1658) ' such a night in London as had rarely
been.' The height of the storm, however, is stated by some to have
been on Monday the 30th of August."— Carlyle, ii. 665.
CROMWELL. 155
I can to be gone." When morning dawned lie lay
insensible; and between three and four of the after-
noon of his fortunate day, he heaved a deep sigh and
expired.
In attempting to sketch the character of Cromwell,
it is especially necessary to get some central point of
view from which we can survey it in its whole outline.
The complexities which it presents — its deep and in-
volved shades — its confused and apparently conflict-
ing features — render this all the more necessary. For,
otherwise, his character becomes unintelligible — a mere
mass of inconsistencies, in which we can see no coher-
ence or meaning. He is great, and yet base ; religious,
and yet a hypocrite ; a demagogue, and yet a despot ;
a dissembler, and yet a trifler ; a man of vast and im-
perial schemes, and yet a man of low and paltry in-
terests. This is something of the blurred and contra-
dicting picture which Cromwell presents in many of
our histories. It may be safely said that no great
character can be explained in this manner. "We must
seek for some inward unity out of which the character
has grown — for hidden threads of consistency running-
through it, underlying all its more obvious appearances,
and binding up its complicated structure into an in-
telligible whole.
The secret of Cromwell's character appears to lie
where he himself supposed — in the depth and power
of his religious sentiment. This we must either admit,
or hold him throughout to have been a hypocrite.
Only one of these two alternatives can possibly re-
main after the careful study of his letters. This man
was either from the first a conscious hypocrite, acting
a part, as has been maintained — deliberately fore-
156 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
casting schemes of glorious yet fraudulent ambition,
the perfidy of which he sought to conceal by the most
elaborate and unwearying pretensions to piety ; or he
was at first and throughout a man in whom the sense
of the Divine predominated — whose rooted and most
ruling instinct was to do God service ; and who, amid
all his actions, deeply censurable as some of these may
have been, never entirely lost sight of this principle
or purpose. Eeligion so fiUed his life that it either
held him or he held it as a mere tool in his service.
And there are few who will read his correspondence
and speeches from beginning to end, with any under-
standing of them — with any intelligent sympathy with
the time and its modes of religious feeling — and doubt
which of these views is the correct one.
The alternative of hypocrisy in the face of his
letters involves a series of suppositions so incredible,
as to compel every candid student to part with it.*
These letters are written in all circumstances — when
as yet he was but a Puritan farmer and friend of
persecuted ministers, when first the great contests
of the Parliament began to stir his tumultuous ener-
gies on the eve of battle, and when the excitement of
* In evidence of this, allusion may be made to the different view of
Cromwell's character suggested by Mr Foster in his " Life," written
for the Cabinet C't/clopcedia more than twenty years ago — in many re-
spects an admirable life — and that suggested in his recent paper, The
Civil Wars and Oliver Cromwell. The "inimitable craft and skill, as-
suming the garb of sanctity," which explains so much in the " Life," has
entirely disappeared in the later sketch. The result of Mr Carlyle's
labours, he says, "has been to show conclusively, and beyond further
dispute, that through all these [Cromwell" s] speeches and letters one
mind runs consistently. In the passionate fervour of his religious feel-
ing the true secret of his life must be sought, and will be found. Every-
where visible and recognisable is a deeply interpenetrated sense of
spiritual dangers, of temporal vicissitudes, and of never-ceasing respon-
sibility to the Eternal, ' Ever in his great Taskmaster's eye.' " — Foster's
Essays, i. 312.
CROMWELL. 157
victory was yet on liiin — regarding the most ordinary
domestic details, and tlie most broad general principles
of religion and policy. They all bear a natural im-
press ; they show the man, the politician, the warrior,
the lather, the husband, and patriot, and not merely
the religionist. The religious ideas and phraseology
in which they abound are in no sense factitious ; they
are the living essence of his common thought ; they
are mixed up with everything he says and does. The
same tone pervades the letters throughout — the same
cast of earnest, grave, and tender feeling — the same
air of rcaliiy. As we read them, and try to purge our
minds of all remembrance of the traditionary Cromwell
with his hypocrisies and grimaces, there is nothing
whatever that could excite such an image within us.
His character rises before us plain, massive, and grand ;
rude in its features, irregular in its outline, but glowing
with an intensely concentrated meaning ; radiant with a
divine fire in every feature — an earnest, practical, strong
man, " in the dark perils of war, and in the high places
of the field : hope shone in him like a pillar of fire when
it had gone out in all others." The confidence of a
divine cause — the light of a divine trust — the soaring-
passion of a faith mighty to subdue mountains, — these
are the grand elements of his character. He un-
covers his most familiar thoughts, he writes of the
most ordinary details as to the marriage and settle-
ment of his son, and the same earnestness meets us —
the same practical spirit and aim show themselves.
No expression escapes from him that suggests osten-
tation or mere effect, or double dealing. If this be
hy[)Ocrisy, it is difficult to conceive what more the
most natural and downright smcerity could have been.
We recognise in Cromwell, therefore, above all, the
158 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
reality of religious conviction. He lived hy faith. It
was the firm perception and hold of the Divine that
carried him forward through all his difficulties and
amidst all his triumphs. God he felt to be with him
and to be his God ; and his firm persuasion of this it
was that strengthened his heart and consecrated his
sword, and bore him erect when weakness or blindness
left others struck down or groping helplessly amidst
the confusion and darkness. The spirit of Puritanism
found in him its most thorough expression as well
as its greatest representative. He was penetrated to
the very core of his being by the thought that God
was ever near to him and guiding him, " ordering
him and affairs concerning him," and that the cause
which he served was His cause. He " seldom fought
without some text of Scripture to support him." And
as he fought, he lived. He was an " unworthy and mean
instrument," to do some good, and God some service.
To doubt or deny the leading of God in the great events
of his time, was to him the deepest impiety — the most
ungodly malice. " Is it an arm of flesh that hath done
these things ?" he says, writing from before Waterford
in lGi9. " Is it the wisdom, or counsel, or strength of
men ? It is the Lord only. God will curse that man
and his house that dares to think otherwise. Sir, you
see the work is done by a divine leading. God gets
into the hearts of men, and persuades them to come
under you. . . . These are the seals of God's appro-
bation of your great change of government — which
indeed was no more yours than these victories and
successes are ours ; yet let them with us say, even the
most unsatisfied heart amongst them, that both are the
righteous judgments and mighty works of God."
This spirit may be called fanaticism. The identi-
CROMWELL, 159
fication of the Divine, not merely with a great moral
cause, but with the accidents of that cause — the inter-
pretation of success as a token of the divine favour,
and the reverse — all this is of the essence of the fana-
tical. Puritanism itself was a fanaticism, in so far as
it merged the spiritual in the temporal, and made its
own dogmas and ordinances tlie measure of the divine.
And the impartial critic cannot refuse to admit that
fanatical elements mingled in Cromwell's character.
The presence of these elements made him pre-eminent-
ly the man of his time — the great impersonation and
power of it. But wliile we can everywhere trace in
him the capacities of fanaticism, and while these show
themselves now and then in startling and even shock-
ing expressions, we see also at every turn of his life
how far he was above them — how the native greatness
of his mind, the breadth of his spirituality, as well
as the shrewdness of his sense, raised him beyond the
limits of the enthusiast. Destitute of intellectual cul-
tivation, and without any of the checks that come from
iTesthetic sensibility or refinement, his mind was yet too
enlightened, sound, and sagacious, and his sympathies
too direct, broad, and vigorous, to permit him to be ab-
solutely swayed by any theories whatever. It was this
that made the difference between him and many of
the men like Harrison, or even Vane, who at one time
surrounded him, and with whom he acted. It was
this that made the difference between him and the
Scotch ministers and generals with whom he argued.
The Divine was never to him this or that institution
or covenant. The external never enslaved him, how-
ever it guided him. The great hero of Puritanism, he
yet rose above its narrowness. Its faith never left him,
and its hopes never died out of him, but its forms fell
IGO ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
away from liim when tliey w^ere no longer serviceable.
Moving in an atmosphere of the wildest fanaticism,
and having " sucked its very dregs," as Mr Hallam will
have it, yet Cromwell was himself no fanatic. The
Divine mastered him, but did not prostrate him. It
inspired, and guided, and blessed him — it carried him
to triumph and power ; made him a tower of strength
to the persecuted Protestant abroad, and a protection
to the peaceable Protestant at home. But even when
its highest passion swayed him, and the very hand
of God seemed upon him and his Avays, his own
eye was clear, and his heart sound, and his hand
steady ; and while the whispers of the Divme were in
his ear, there was no intoxication nor delusion in his
soul.
Cromwell, then, was no hypocrite and no mere enthu-
siast. He was simply the greatest Englishman of his
time ; the most powerful, if not the most perfect, ex-
pression of its religious spirit, and the master-genius
of its military and political necessities. This is the
only consistent and adequate explanation of his career.
Every such time of revolution must find its representa-
tive and hero, the mirror and minister of its necessities,
but at the same time the master of them. Had Crom-
well been less religious, he could never have become
a centre of influence in such a time. Not even the
subtlest and most profound dissimulation could have
made him so. Had he been merely religious — had the
Godward tendency absorbed his being, and become a
disease of fanaticism, rather than a stimulant of patriot-
ism, then his incipient influence would have crumbled
to pieces in his grasp, and his power have gone from
him so soon as he tried to exercise it. It was not
merely because he represented his time, but because he
CROMWELL. IGl
rose above it — because religion was in him the nurture
of transcendent abilities, the baptism and ever-renew-
ing life of heroic energies — that he became what he was,
and accomplished what he did. Eeligion formed him,
but the original materials were of the grandest and
most powerful character. " A larger soul, I think, hath
seldom dwelt in a house of clay than his was." *
This largeness of soul was everywhere seen in Crom-
well's actions. His mind heaved with the burden of
his thoughts at every great crisis of his life. He saw
the wide issues stretching out before him — issues quite
unseen and unappreciated by many with whom he
acted ; and the absorption of thought and semi-pro-
phetic rapture which sometimes came from this dreamy
and far-reaching foresight,-|- appears to be the true ex-
planation of many supposed instances of his profound
dissimulation. He has been credited with elaborate
and hidden scheming, when in fact he was rather dream-
ing, seeing in vision before him the great outline of the
future. A certain exaltation of spirit, lofty, ardent,
and uncalculating, was apt to sway him like a divine
afflatus, betraymg itself in his face and manner, some-
times in a radiant majesty and kingly presence, and
sometimes in a wild and boisterous humour. It was
this that, suffusing his whole being, and giving to his
steps an " uncontrollable buoyancy " when he entered
* Maidstone.
f His supposed words to M. de Bellifevi'e, President of the Parliament
of Paris, who had seen and known him before his assumj^tion of power —
words upon which Mr Foster has dwelt so much in his recent essay — that
" one never mounts so hirjh as when one does not know where one is going " —
are not inconsistent with the gift of foresight attributed to him, even if
the words were anything more than a confused memory on the part of
M. de Bellievre. Cromwell's foresight was not the foresight of worldly
prudence, but the vision of his destiny as in God's hands, to do some
great work, to mount as high as he could.
L
162 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
London in state, after the battle of Worcester, led his
Republican chaplain to murmur to himself, " That man
will yet be king of England." It may have been the
same rapt excitement that made him jest so wildly with
Ludlow and Martin on the eve of the King's death, and
pursue the former down stairs vdth the cushions of the
council-chamber in which they had met, and where,
while talking with them, the curtain of the future had
risen before him. Ludlow, with his " wodden head,"
could only see the tomfoolery of this ; but there was
a fulness of bursting thought, of inarticulate emotion,
in our hero that may be conceived exploding in such
a riotous and absurd manner, as this and many stories
impute to him. Many of these stories, indeed, are mere
lies — the concoctions of the mean cowards that dared
to slander him after the Eestoration for a j)iece of bread.
Yet it was of the very character of Cromwell's greatness
— substantial and massive, without classical dignity or
harmony or delicacy — to be indifferent to outward
polish and calm restraint of demeanour. Some ele-
ments of his rude farmer life — of that disorderly ap-
pearance which, on his first becoming known in Parlia-
ment, so stamped itself on the minds of his contempo-
raries— probably remained in him to the last, under all
his "great and majestical deportment."
For mere -forms of any kind he evidently cared little.
He appreciated and made use of them in public, and
wherever the national honour was concerned in him as
its representative ; but he was also glad to lay them
aside, and descend from formality to simple familiarity.
" With his friends," says Whitelock, " he would be
exceedingly familiar, and by way of diversion would
make verses with us. He would commonly call for
tobacco, pipes, and a candle, and would now and then
I
CROMWELL. 163
take tobacco himself. Then lie would fall again to his
serious and great hisiness." Obviously a plain and simple
man among his fellows, with no airs and no grandeurs
about hmi when he had no stately work to do, no
national splendours to represent, and no Manzinis and
Dues de Crequi to overawe. Tliis genuine simplicity,
amidst all his extravagances and assumptions, we can-
not help thinking had more to do than anything else
with his refusal of the title of king. With the reality
of sovereignty in his possession, the mere name and
insignia could have but few attractions for him. And
confused and unintelligible as those interviews and
speeches between him and the Parliamentary chiefs and
lawyers on the subject are — suggesting now his wish
for, and now his indifference to, the title — the prompt-
ing of his own manly and simple nature had probably
as much to do with the result as the apprehension of
the army or any other cause whatever. To represent
him as merely dallying with the Parliament and the
lawyers, while he had made up his mind to accept, and
as having been at length only prevented from carrying
out his wishes by the threatenings of the army chiefs,
is more consistent with a character of craft and intriofue
than with one of principle, tact, and energy.
The student of this part of English history is every-
where driven back upon a broad interpretation of facts.
He has always the same problem before him — to ex-
plain tlie culmination of a patriotic and religious revo-
lution by the triumph of mere force and perfidy, planned
with long deliberation, and executed with consummate
skill ; or, on the other hand, to regard the power and
Protectorate of Cromwell as the inevitable issue of
successive national exigencies, understood and seized as
they came by a master — by the one man in the king-
164 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
cTom wlio had a real discernment of the course of events,
and real capacity to guide and order them. There
are, no doubt, circumstances on the mere surface that
favour the former explanation. It was the one which
necessarily sprang up and became part of the national
creed after the Eestoration. But the more all the
inner history and details of the time are studied ; the
more the temper of the religious influences, which then
more than all other influences moved the English
people, is aj^prehended ; the more, above all, the great
central character is probed and examined in the light
of his own sayings and doings, apart from the scur-
rilous exaggerations of Royalist pamphleteers,* or the
envious misinterpretations of Eepublican zealots, t — the
more will the latter view gain ground as the only con-
sistent and intelligible, as well as enlarged and liberal
interpretation of all the circumstances. Selfish and
despotical as may still be judged many of the acts of
Cromwell ; puzzling and obscure as must remain some
of the shades of his character ; perilous as may be the
very glory claimed for him — such as no other in our
national liberty can ever share, and none without crime
could ever again dream of ; — yet his true parallel will
be found not in the vulgar despot, who triumphs by
terror and rules by the bayonet, but in the divine hero
who, interpreting the instincts and necessities of a great
people, rose on their buoyancy to the proud position
which, having seized by his commanding genius, he
held, upon the whole, with a beneficent influence, as he
did with an imperishable glory.
* Heath and others. f Ludlow and otheis.
II.
MILTON.
MILTON.
It may seem questionable to assume Milton as a re-
presentative of Puritanism ; and in the narrower sense
of that word, the question would be a fair one ; for
Milton was certainly a great deal more than a Puritan.
His mind and culture show elements even anti-Puri-
tan. His youth and early manhood were academic
and literary. Classical and poetical studies moulded
his taste, and disciplined and refined his intellect.
The Cambridge student of the years 1625-1632 —
the youthful poet at Horton — and the leisurely dilU-
tante traveller at Florence, Eome, Naples, and Geneva,
during the seven following years — seems far enough
from participation in the religious spirit which was
then spreading throughout England, and beginning
to move it to its centre ; then, again, the later spiri-
tualist of the years of the Eestoration, Arian in doc-
trine, and latitudinarian in practice, who owned no
church, and nowhere joined in public worship — the
blind old x^oet — the divine dreamer of a Paradise Lost
and a Paradise Eegained — " who used to sit in a grey,
coarse cloth coat at the door of his house near Bunliill
Fields, in warm sunny weather, to enjoy the fresh air,"
may seem equally removed from the nonconformity
that was still active and zealous under all its renewed
168 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
oppressions — that lived in jails or flourislied in corners
beyond the scrutiny of the Five-mile Act.
It is nevertheless true that, in all the higher and
more comprehensive meaning of the word, Milton was
a Puritan. Even in his early years, his sympathy
with its spirit of ecclesiastical reform, the polemical
hatred against Episcopacy which it nourished, pre-
vented him from entering the Church. On his re-
turn to England from his travels abroad, he plunged
into the very heart of the religious contention that
was then brewing on all sides. His first prose writings
are as distinctively Puritan in their dogmatic spirit as
any writings in all the century. During the years of
his controversial manhood, he was identified closely
with every great phase of the movement. He was the
advocate of its triumphs — of its excesses. He stood
forth before the world as its literary genius and apolo-
gist. And, finally, his two great poems, while classical
in their structure and in the severe and felicitous ma-
jesty of their style, are intensely Puritan in their spirit
— in the intellectual ideas, and even the imagmative
scenery through which their great purpose is worked
out and impressed upon the mind of the reader.
There is no picture of Puritanism, therefore, that
would be at all complete which did not embrace John
Milton as one of its prominent figures. The very fact
that his relations to it are in some respects exceptional
— that he stands so much alone, and above the move-
ment, while intimately connected with it — makes it all
the more necessary to introduce him ; for there is no
other character can be a substitute for him ; there is
no one else that did the same work as he did, and in
the same spirit. He remains the single great poet that
Puritanism has produced ; and while we shall see
MILTOX. 169
abundantly how mucli more went to his formation than
Puritanism — how broader sympathies and affinities
were necessary to nurse and educate his genius — we
shall see at the same time what a peculiar consecration
its religious spirit gave to that genius — to what un-
earthly heights it carried it "above the Olympian hill,"
"above the flight of Pegasean wing ; " and what richness,
and strength, and mystery of grandeur all his high
powers derived from commimion with those biblical
thoughts and biblical forms of expression on which
the Puritan spirit exclusively fed and delighted to
clothe itself.
The life of Milton is in itself a sort of Puritan
Drama, severe, earnest, sad, yet with the bright lights
of an irrepressible poesy irradiating it. The spiritual
discontent and unrest of his youth hiding itself be-
neath a widely sympathetic and varied culture of his
intellect, taste, and feelings, of which his early poems
continue the ever beautiful expression ; his stormy
and contentious manhood, mingling pride and stern-
ness, and even cruel harshness, with the assertion of
the most noble principles, both political and religious ;
and then the mournful close of all, " the evil days and
evil tongues " —
" In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,
And solitude,"
in which his high hopes for human freedom and the
triumph of divine truth expire — the picture is a grandly
impressive one, the heroic lesson of which is only the
more conspicuous from the apparent failure, the sacri-
fice of the hero.
His life divides itself conveniently for our purpose
into three main epochs — the fi-rst extending to his
170 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
return from liis travels abroad and settlement at home
on the eve of the outbreak of the civil war (1608-40) ;
the second running throughout the memorable twenty-
years of the civil war and the Commonwealth (1640-60) ;
and the third reaching from the Restoration to his
death in 1674. The first of these is the period of
his education and early poems — the classical period, so
to speak, of his life ; the second marks the era of his
controversial activity — the Puritan phase of his career ;
the third is the age of his later great poems, and of
his contemplative speculations in Christian doctrine.
The first period is the most crowded with external
incidents ; the second and third derive their chief in-
terest from the splendid intellectual monuments that
so thickly mark them, and the preparation of which
constituted their chief occupation.
Milton's father was a scrivener in Bread Street,
London, and there the poet was born on the 9th of
December 1608. Besides himself, there were four
children, three sisters and a brother. Two of the
sisters died in infancy; but his brother Christopher
and his sister Ann both meet us in interesting rela-
tions as we trace the career of the poet. The original
seat of Milton's family was in Oxfordshire ; and the
reputed grandfather of the poet, by name also John
Milton, is said to have held the office of under-ranger
of the royal forest of Shotover, in the immediate vicin-
ity of Oxford.* Piccent researches -J- cannot be said to
* " His grandfather was of Holton in Oxfordshire, near Shotover,"
saj's Aubrey. " He was," says Wood, " an under-ranger or keeper of
the forest of Shotover, near to the (said) town of Holton, but descended
from those of his name who had lived beyond all record at Milton, near
Holton and Thame in Oxfordshire."
f Mr Hunter and Mr Masson.
MILTON. 171
have thrown any clearer light on the pedigree of the
poet. That his grandfather's name was Kichard and
not John, and that he was of Stanton St John's instead
of Holton, have been suggested with some degree of
probability, but without any satisfactory clue of evi-
dence. It is more clearly known that he was a Eoman
Catholic, and rigidly devoted to his faith ; so that when
his son John, the father of the poet, embraced the Ee-
formed doctrines, he disinherited him, and would never
again receive him into favour. To this event, pro-
bably, it was owing that he settled in London as a
scrivener, a business very much resembling that of a
modern attorney.
Under the sign of the Spread Eagle in Bread Street,
Milton's father throve in this capacity. He was a
" man of the utmost integrity," his son says, with
some degree of pride ; eminently successful in his pro-
fession, but by no means merely a man of parchments
and law, for he found leisure to devote himself to liter-
ature, and especially to music, in Avhich he became
highly proficient, and one of the best composers of his
time. The name of the poet's mother is commonly
supposed to have been Bradshaw, of the same family
as the famous John Bradshaw, President of the Coun-
cil of State in the Commonwealth, although, somewhat
strangely, her own grandson Phillips gives the name
as Caston. Of her character there is not much known,
save what her son says in the same treatise in which
he characterises his father. " She was a most approved
mother," he says, " and widely known for her works of
charity."*
Milton's home appears to have been a very happy
* " Matre probatissima et eleemosynis per viciniam protissimam
nota." — Defeiisio Secunda.
172 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
one — a grave and earnest Puritan home, in wliicli
prayer was daily offered, in wliicli the minister of the
parish, the Kev. Eichard Stoke, a " zealous Puritan,
and constant, and judicious, and religious preacher,"
was a frequent visitor, but where no gloom reigned.
His father's devotion to music must of itself have
lightened any tendency to domestic austerity, and
his son's tastes in the same direction proved a con-
stant source of entertainment. The Poet gave very
early promise of his wonderful gifts, and this, com-
bined with his singular beauty, made him an object
of very fond and proud interest to his parents. In
evidence of this, we have his portrait taken by Cor-
nelius Jansen when he was only ten years of age, —
the well-known picture of the little boy-poet, with his
auburn hair not yet clustered round his neck, but lying
in soft gentle waves on his forehead ; the face, dreamy
and solid rather than bright and vivid, set above a stiff,
broad, and elaborate frill, and light-fitting tunic, enve-
loping his person more like a casing of armour than a
soft and fitting child-raiment. According to Aubrey,
he was even now a poet. The verse-making tendency
had begun to show itself in him, fostered by his father
and his father's friend John Lane, whose " several
poems, if they had not had the ill fate," says Philips,
" to remain unpublished, might have gained him a
name not much inferior, if not equal to Drayton and
others of next rank to Spenser." Not only Lane's
poems, but his very name has perished in the great
current of English literature.
Milton's special education seems to have been con-
ducted at home in those early years, under the direction
of a tutor of the name of Thomas Young, a Scotchman
by birth, and a student of St Andrews. He afterwards
MILTON. 173
became a proniiuent Puritan divine, and Milton retained
for him a strong feeling of gratitude and respect.*
When about twelve, the young poet was sent to St
Paul's grammar school, founded by Dean Colet, and in
the poet's time under the charge of a Mr Gill and his
son, the former of whom was really a man of superior
worth and learning, "a noted Latinist, critic, and divine."
The son was also a man of considerable accomplish-
ment— a poet in his way, but of an erratic and trouble-
some disposition. Milton, in after years, preserved
somewhat intimate relations with both of them, and
various Latin letters passed between him and young Gill,
for whom he seems always to have felt a warm interest,
notwithstanding his vanity and recurring unsteadiness.
Here he laid the foundations of his Latin scholarship,
although none of his compositions in that language
can be referred to so early a date.-f- Here also his
mind opened to the great world of thought. He him-
self tells us that " before he left school he had acquired
various tongues, and also some not insignificant taste
for the sweetness of philosophy." He pursued his
studies with great ardour, strongly encouraged by his
father, whose name he never ceases to mention with
affectionate esteem, when he alludes to the subject of
his education, which he often does in his writings. His
ardour was in fact over-stimulated ; and late hours and
undue application as a boy laid the foundation of
weakness inliis eyes, and otherwise injured his health.
" The study of humane letters," he says, " I seized
with such eagerness that, from the twelfth year of my
age, I scarcely ever went from my lessons to bed be-
* He was one of the Smectymnuan divines that Milton defended,
t The earliest is a letter to his old tutor Young, dated March 26,
1625, immediately after he had left school and entered at the university.
174 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
fore midniglit ; which, indeed, was tlie first cause of
injury to my eyes, to whose natural weakness there
were also added frequent headaches."
Along with liis classical studies he found leisure
to cultivate his native literature, and his poetic
vein had already begun to flow freely in his own
language. The poetry of the Elizabethan age, in its
outburst of splendid production, could not but fas-
cinate a youthful imagination such as his. His own
admiring language, as well as the tastes of his school-
master,* admit of little doubt that he studied Spenser
with delighted enthusiasm. But a poet of far less
name — scarcely, indeed, remembered now — appears to
have exercised the most direct influence over Milton
at this time, and even permanently to have imbued
his poetic thought with certain forms of imaginative
suggestion. This was Du Bartas, a famous French
poet of his day, whose Divine Weeks and Works had
been translated by Sylvester and become widely popu-
lar. Du Bartas was a particular friend of King James,
and had visited him in Scotland, "f His popularity at
Court had probably helped the circulation of his poem ;
but it had in itself also many claims to the interest
of such an age, when intellectual excitement was
running so strongly on religious topics. The high-
sounding breadth and magnificence of its descriptions,
the vague though barren grandeur of its conceptions —
its bastard sublimity, in short — were just what was
* Old Gill evidently knew SjDenser and admired him. See Mason's
Milton, p. 62.
+ The i-eaders of James Melville's Diary will remember a famous in-
tellectual skirmish in St Mary's College, St Andrews, between Andrew
Melville and Archbishop Adamson, at which Du Bartas and the King-
were present, and the judicious criticism of the former upon the encounter
of the rival theologians.
MILTON, 175
likely to seize on the mind of a sclioolboy,* even such
a schoolboy as Milton. In the two specimens which
have been preserved of his political genius at this time,
we can trace distinctly the influence of his study of
Du Bartas. These are two translations of Psalm 114
and 13G, which were afterwards published by himself,
with the inscription that "they were done by the
author at fifteen years old." Johnson's somewhat
disparaging criticism of these pieces is well known;
but they are spirited and harmonious, showing the true,
clear, firm tone of genius, although the echo of Du
Bartas lingers in them.
Milton was entered, on the 12th of February 1624,
as a " lesser pensioner " at Christ's College in Cam-
bridge.-f* His tutor was the Eev. William Chappel,
who became Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, and
afterwards Bishop of Cork. Chappel was a man of
great distinction in his college, especially as a dis-
putant. He had displayed his powers with singular
triumph before King James in 1615, and'^'even against
the King himself when he ventured, with his accus-
tomed vanity, to take up the subject, and enter the
lists with the theological champion. James, with
unwonted good-nature, after getting the worse of an
argument, " professed his joy to find a man of so great
* Mr Masson has quoted a saying of Dryden's, in which he owns to the
same influence. " I can remember," he says, " when I was a boy,
I thought inimitable Spenser a mean poet in comparison of Sylvester's
Du Bartas, and was rapt in ecstacy when I read these lines : —
' Now when the winter's keener breath began
To crystallise the Baltic ocean,
To glaze the lakes and bridle up the floods,
And periwig with wool the bald-pate woods.' "
t " Admissus est pensionarius minor, Feb. 12, 1624, sub Mro Chap-
pel, sohitque pro ingressu, 10s.," says the catalogue of students for the
year.
176 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
talents, so good a subject." No tutor, according to
Fuller, " bred more or better pupils than Mr William
Chappel, so exact his care in their education." How-
ever this may have been, Milton and he did not suit
each other ; for towards the end of his second academic
year they had a quarrel, so inveterate and disagree-
able as to necessitate Milton's removal from the uni-
versity for some time. This is the famous incident
of his " rustication," of which Johnson has made such
unfavourable use. The incident, when looked into,
seems to have been of a comparatively trivial character,
not involving the loss of a term, if it partook of the
character of "rustication" at all ; while the insinua-
tion, introduced with such an air of rotund reluctance,
but with such real relish — " I am ashamed to relate,
what I fear is true, that Milton was one of the last
students in either university that suffered the public
indignity of corporal correction" — does not rest on any
satisfactory evidence.*
To the clsse of the same year we are indebted for
the verses " On the Death of a Fair Infant Dying of a
Cough." The infant was his niece, the daughter of his
sister, who, just before the poet left home for college,
had been married to Mr Edward Philips, of the Crown
Office. The little one had scarcely come to excite its
parents' hopes when it was snatched away : —
" 0 fairest flower ! no sooner blown than blasted —
Soft silken primrose, fading timelessly —
Summer's chief honour — if thou hadst outlasted
Bleak winter's force that made thy blossom dry."
There is, with some youthful pedantry, great sweetness
* The reader is referred to Mr Masson (pp. 135, 136), who has ex-
amined with the most conscientious care this as every other incident of
the poet's youthful career.
MILTON. 177
in the verses, and a lingering softness, very touching,
as in the concluding verse —
" Then thou, the mother of so sweet a child,
Her false -imagined loss cease to lament,
And wisely learn to curb thy sorrows wild.
Think what a })resent thou to God hast sent.
And render Him with patience what He lent.
This if thou do, He will an offspring give,
That till the world's last end shall make thy name to live."
In the remaining years of Milton's academic career
he established a high reputation for scholarship ; and
whereas, at first, he seems to have been but little
liked,* he became at length, if not popular, yet highly
esteemed in his college. His nephew says, " He was
loved and admired by the whole university, particu-
larly by the fellows and most ingenious persons in
his house." And he himself, in reply to an opponent,
who, on the commencement of his controversial acti-
vity, when he had begun to stir the powerful dislike
of the Prelatic party, accused him of having been
" vomited out " of the university "after an inordinate
and riotous youth," derisively thanks him for the slan-
der; "for it hath given me," he continues, "an apt
occasion to acknowledge publicly, with all grateful
mind, that more than ordinary respect which I found
above any of my equals at the hands of those cour-
teous and learned men, the fellows of that college,
wherein I spent some years : who, at my parting, after
I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified
many ways, how much better it would content that I
would stay ; as, by many letters full of kindness and
loving respect, both before that time and long after, I
was assured of their singular good affection towards
me." "f*
* Johnson. + Apology for Smedymnuus.
M
178 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
It was Milton's intention, on proceeding to Cam-
bridge, to qualify Mmself for the Church. His father
and his friends seem to have considered this the na-
tural employment to which his great powers called
him, and he himself entered into their intentions.
" By the intentions of my parents and friends, I was
destined, of a child, to the service of the Church, and
in my own resolutions." "When precisely his own
mind began to waver in this resolution, we cannot
say. His imiversity experience had something to do
with it; but the real cause was deeper, and lay, be-
yond doubt, in the profound opposition of his temper
and character to the spirit then prevailing in the heads
of the Church. Laud had been appointed Bishop
of London in 1628, and during the next three years
— coinciding with the concluding years of Milton's
university course, when his mind would be naturally
busy with his prospects, and he was perfectly com-
petent to appreciate the full bearing of all that was
going on around him — the new Court favourite, bishop,
and privy councillor, was carrying out his schemes for
the more Catholic remodelling of the Church with a
high hand. These schemes were such as a mind like
Milton's could only contemplate with disgust. The
proud consciousness of genius which he already che-
rished, his lofty sympathy for all that was great and
noble in moral sentiment, his intense seriousness of
thought, and his contempt for mere forms and nice-
ties of detail, must have made him regard such a
system as Laud's with the whole dislike of his high
and sensitive nature. This is sufficiently apparent in
his own language, in the same passage from which we
have already quoted. " Coming to some maturity of
years, and perceiving what tyranny had invaded the
MILTON. 179
Church, that he who would take orders must subscribe
slave, and take an oath, without which, unless he
took with a conscience that he would relish, he must
either straight perjure or split his faith, I thought
better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred
office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude
and forswearing." The subscriptions and oaths re-
quired from candidates for holy orders, he says here,
expressly repelled him ; but it was not these formali-
ties merely in themselves — for, in point of fact, he had
already, by his entrance into the university, complied
with all that they involved ; it was such signs of bond-
age, viewed in the light of the dominant system, whose
aim was to exterminate all individuality and freedom
of conscience, and the nobleness of thought that alone
comes from these ; it was the Prelatic " tyranny," in
short, which more than ever, and in worse forms,
had invaded the Church, that really moved him to
abandon it.
He does not seem, however, to have made up his
mind definitely before he left the university. The
process of struggle and dislike had begmi, but it had
not yet terminated ; for it is in the last year of his
university course that he is supposed to have written
to a friend as if he were still slowly carrying on his
preparations for the Church, " not taking thought of
being late, so it give advantage to be more fit.'' His
friend, who is unknown, had remonstrated with him
on his " too much love of learning, and his dreaming
away his years " in the arms of studious retirement,
rather than actively bestirring himself for the duties
of life; and he defends himself in a strain half-play-
ful, half-serious. Although he does not clearly ex-
plain, he hints that he had far deeper grounds than
180 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
any mere "endless delight of speculation" for liis hesi-
tation— grounds which had not yet turned him from
his resolution, but were evidently in course of doing
so. In this same remarkable letter he encloses the
well-known beautiful sonnet " On his being arrived
at the age of twenty-three : " —
" How soon liath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three-antl-twentieth year !
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom showeth.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth
That I to manhood am arrived so near ;
And inward ripeness doth much less appear
Than some more timely-hajipy spirits endueth.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still, in strictest measure, even
To that same lot, however mean or high.
Towards which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven.
All is, if I have grace to iise it so.
As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye."
There is beneath the deprecating tone of the sonnet
the same quiet consciousness of strength as in the
letter, and especially the same grave moral serious-
ness. His " inward ripeness " might much less ap-
pear, considering his years, than in the case of others;
Imt even while his modesty suggests this thought, his
heart tells him that the ripeness is there, and will
show itself in full time ; and his proud integrity, and
climbing earnestness, he knows, are equal to any task
that may be assigned him. There is now, and at all
times, in Milton, a sustained self-conscious strength and
dignity of purpose which shrinks from no inspection.
On leaving Cambridge, after taking his Master's
degree in July 1682, Milton retired to his "father's
country residence" at Horton, in Buckinghamshire.
Hither the scrivener had sought a pleasant retreat
MILTON. 181
in which to spend his old age. The world had j)ros-
pered with him ; his daughter was well and happily
married, and his sons nearly educated, and looking
forward to settlement in the world ; and so he sought
repose, in his declining years, from the cares of busi-
ness, amidst the rural delights whose memory had
lingered in his heart from the days that he left the
village home in Oxfordshire. Hoi-ton is pleasantly
situated, not far from Windsor, in the district famil-
iarly known in our political history as the Chiltern
Hundreds. A fertile landscape, well wooded and
watered, " russet lawns and fallows grey," and the
quiet rich meadow-pastures, such as the English eye
delights to look upon, formed the scene then as well
as now — the noble towers of Windsor, " bosomed high
in tufted trees," rising over it, and crowning it with
their magnificence. Here Milton spent the most part
of the next five years of his life, varied by occasional
journeys to London for the purpose of purchasing
books, or of " learning something new in mathematics
or in music."
There is no period of our poet's life that fixes itself
in such a fitting and felicitous picture before the mind
as these five years at Horton. It is the eminently poeti-
cal period of his life — poetical not merely in the luxu-
riant inspiration of the "Allegro" and "Penseroso," the
"Arcades," " Comus," and " Lycidas," but in the cir-
cumstances in which we image him to ourselves ; for
without drawing upon our mere fancy, we cannot but
conceive him as a loving and delighted student of nature
in those years. He himself, indeed, says nothing of his
conscious delight in nature. In his allusions to this
period he speaks rather of his hard and continued
studies. " In continued reading, I deduced the affairs
182 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
of the Greeks to tlie time when they ceased to he
Greeks." But, however husy with his historical studies,
his imagination must have been also intensely quick-
ened by the outward world around him. At every
pore of his sensitive being he must have drunk in
deep draughts of natural beauty, and through every
sense garnered up treasures of imagery for exquisite
use ; for his poems of this period, especially the
"Allegro" and "Penseroso," show a pure, full, and
unrestrained abandonment to outward impressions,
quite singular with him. The most charming com-
placency in Nature is united to the most vehement
and passionate sympathies with it. His soul goes
forth in revel with its moods — now gay with its smiles,
now sad with its gloom, now singing in a clear heaven
of light, and now "most musical, most melancholy."
There is little or none of the self-conscious restraint,
reflective subtlety, and elaborate application that may
be traced in his muse both before and afterwards.
Tor example, in his ode on the " Nativity," composed
before leaving college, as well as in his college exer-
cises, we see strongly at work the didactic elements
of his mind forecasting a high and solemn lesson in
every play of thought ; and this moral intent — this
divine aim — was deeply implanted in the very heart
of Milton's genius, and gives its complexion to all
his most characteristic writings. But now, for a while,
in his fresh and free communion with nature, he is
able to forget this moral spirit, and to surrender him-
self to the mere wayward impulses of sensuous feeling
as they stir him. It is as if he had made a pause in
the serious and thoughtful purposes of his life, and
given himself up for a season to an entranced enjoy-
ment of external life and beauty.
MILTON. 183
The sonnet on " May Morning/' wliicli opens this
series of his poems, strikes the key-note of the whole : —
"Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green laj) throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May ! thou dost inspire
Mirth and faith, and warm desrre.
Woods and groves are of thy dressing.
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing ;
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long."
The song of the nightingale warbling at eve, " when
all the woods are still ; " the night raven singing be-
neath the "jealous wings" of the "brooding dark-
ness ; " the lark beginning her flight and " startling
the dull night" "from her watch-tower in the skies;"
the "dappled dawn," "the frolic wind," "breathing
the spring," and "the rocking winds piping loud;"
the great sun
' ' Robed in flames and amber light.
The clouds in thousand liveries dight ; "
the morn "riding near her highest noon ;" and
" as if her head she bowed,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud ; "
the " upland hamlets, with many a youth and maid
" Dancing in the checkered shade ; "
and the evening stories when the dance is done, spiced
by the "nut-brown ale ;" the whistle of the ploughman
o'er the furrowed land ; the blithe song of the millv-
maid ; the mower whettmg his scythe, and the shep-
herd telling his tale,
" Under the hawi;horn in the dale."
Such are mere fragments of the series of imagery that
184 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
meets us in "L' Allegro" and " II Penseroso," all gathered
from the daily scenes and sounds surrounding the poet
in Horton, filling his heart with gladness, colouring
his imagination witli the most varied hues, and mould-
ing his utterances to the most perfect music. There
are nowhere in our language such charming nature-
pieces — such breathings of harmonious responsiveness
to the checkered influences of the external world as
they play over the soul, and draw it now to mirth and
now to melancholy, now to rapture and now to sad-
ness. It requires an effort of thought to realise the
Milton of later years in those effusions, with scarce a
plan, without the least trace of moral lesson ; like the
continuous snatches of a melodious spirit swayed by
the sensitive impulses of the hour, and catching up,
by the mere affinity of imaginative contrast — by the
links of mere vagrant association — the successive pic-
tures that evoke and express its feeling. They have
none of the classicality of his " Ode" — of its severe
majesty, its spiritual aim. They are the mere war-
blings of a rich-souled child of nature, giving forth, in
bursts of lyrical sweetness, the natural impressions
which have sunk into his being and wakened it to
song.
In the " Comus " and the " Lycidas " we have the
same full, vivid, and rich appreciation of nature, but
not the same degree of abandonment to its impulses.
There is much more of ethical and didactic seriousness
in both. The moral austerity of the lady in "Comus"
rising in "sacred vehemence" against the "unhallowed"
suggestions of the Bacchanal — the whole idea of the
poem, which is essentially ethical, notwithstanding its
light lyrical structure and the sensuous fulness of its
imagery — remind us of Milton's more characteristic
MILTON, 185
spirit; while the pensive grandeur of the " Lycidas,"
with all its lingering and softened music, has its almost
perfect harmony and blended pathos of feeling broken
by a passage wdiere we catch loudly the voice of the
stern Puritan moralist : —
" Last came, and last did go,
The pilot of the Galilean lake :
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain ;
The golden oi)es, the iron shuts amain.
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bes2)ake :
' How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow of such, as for their bellies' sake
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold !
Of other care they little reckoning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast.
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wTctched straw :
The hungry sheep look up and are not fed ;
But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.' "
The difference between the stern strength, the vehe-
ment and even harsh earnestness of these lines, and
the gentle natural ])atlios, the sweet-tempered tender-
ness of those almost immediately following —
" Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies.
The tufted crow-toe and i)ale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowuig violet.
The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head.
And every flower that sad embroidery wears :
Bid amaranthus all his l)cauty shed.
And daftbdillies till their cu])S with tears.
To strew the laiu-eat herse where Lycid lies " —
presents in interesting connection the two main and
contrasted features of Milton's genius — severe, self-
186 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
contained seriousness, and surrendering passionateness
— the conscious reflectiveness of the moralist, and the
rich abounding sensitiveness of the poet.
During those happy years at Horton we see him
almost entirely as the gentle poetic dreamer. His im-
agination, fed by the rural sights and sounds amidst
which he lived, burst into its most beautiful bloom.
The joyous fulness of his ripening manhood, as it
were, filled up his whole activity. But we detect in
such a passage as that from the " Lycidas " how the
austere and polemical side of his nature was vigorous
and working beneath all the rich manifestations of the
imaginative and poetical The Milton of Horton, as he
apparently dreams away his years in studious leisure
and the love of nature, is still the Puritan, although
we can just trace, as it were, the grave Puritan eyes
looking forth from a face of bright natural beauty, and
tresses of luxuriant culture. The eyes are Puritan
eyes as we steadily gaze into them, though all else is
artistic, imaginative, unpuritan.
On the 3d of April 1G37 Milton's mother died, and
in the spring of the following year he set out for the
Continent. He had probably for some time cherished
this project, and his mother's death, by breaking the
tie which bound him to Horton, may have set him
free to carry it out. He arrived in Paris in May, 1638,
furnished with a letter of advice — an " elegant epistle,"
he terms it — from Sir Henry Wotton. Through Sir
Henry or others he was introduced to Lord Scudamore,
the English ambassador, who received him very cour-
teously ; and what was still more gratifying to him,
took pains to make him acquainted with Grotius, then
ambassador in Paris for the Court of Sweden. The
great Dutchman was naturally an object of regard to
MILTON. 187
Milton ; and Grotius, on his part, seems to have recog-
nised the worth and genius of the young Englislunan.
" He took," says Phillips, " the visit kindly, and gave
him entertainment suitable to his worth and the higli
commendations he had heard of him." Grotius was
then busy with a great scheme of comprehension for
the Lutheran and English Churches. He had broached
the subject to Laud, but with little success. No doubt
he would discourse of its advantages with Milton — we
may please ourselves at least with this thought ; but
he was not likely to receive much more encourage-
ment from him than he had done from the English
primate, though from very opposite reasons. The mild
latitudinarianism of the Dutch jurist and divine, his
Arminian sympathies and spirit of ecclesiastical indif-
ference, were not likely at this date to commend them-
selves to one moved with disgust at Prelatic tyranny,
and w^ho, even in Italy, could not hold his tongue on
the subject of Popery.
Milton's stay in Paris was short — only " for some
days," according to Ms own statement. He took his
departure towards Italy, furnished with letters of intro-
duction to English merchants along his proposed route.
He seems to have taken his journey leisurely, probably
by way of Lyons and the Pihone to Marseilles, and
thence to Mce, where he took packet for Genoa. Erom
Genoa he went, also by sea, to Leghorn, and thence
to Pisa and Florence. Here he remained for " two
months."
It is easy to imagine the delighted enthusiasm with
which Milton would enter Italy. And, coming after
his sojourn amid quiet English landscapes, the change
to its brilliant skies, and the southern luxuriance of its
natiu'al life, may have been among the most fruitful
188 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
and eiiricliing sources of liis enjoyment. His poetic
culture certainly bears traces of the one influence, no
less than of the other. Yet, so far as we can gather
from his own statement,'" which is the only basis of
our knowledge of his Italian journey, it was the Italy
not so much of natural beauty as of scholarly and his-
torical association that interested Milton. Florence,
as the great centre of Italian culture, was the first place
where he tarried. In this city, which he says he had
always regarded above others for the elegance of its
language and the distinction of its men of genius, he
found himself for a while in a congenial home ; and
he recalls as an imperishable memory the pleasant in-
tercourse he had there with its great scholars. " There,
immediately," he says, " I contracted the acquaintance
of many truly noble and learned men, whose private
academies (valuable alike for the cultivation of polite
letters, and the preservation of friendships) I constantly
frequented. The memory of you, Jacopo Gaddi ; of you.
Carlo Dati; of you, Frescobaldi, Coltellini, Bonmattei,
Chementelli, Francini, and of several others, always
grateful and pleasant to me, time shall never destroy."
With these worthies he entered into the most free and
unreserved literary associations. At their meetings or
academies he gave specimens of his poetical powers
by reciting some of the Latin poems he had already
composed, t They complimented him in return.
Count Carlo Dati eulogised him in a Latin address,
and Francini wrote an Italian ode in his praise. An-
other litterateur, Antonio Malatesti, whose name does
not occur in his enumeration, presented him with a
* Defensio Secunda.
*t-" Under twenty, or thereabouts," he says. He shows a singular
anxiety at all times to claim any merit arising from the youthfulness of
his compositions.
MILTON. 189
manuscript copy of his poems, inscribed with a flatter-
ing dedication to himself. What probably interested
Milton still more than these literary pleasantries of
intercourse — he seems to have talked freely and fully
with these friends on the subject of religious and in-
tellectual liberty. In his " Areopagitica," he says,
in allusion to this, " I could recount what I have seen
and heard in other countries, where this kind of inqui-
sition tyrannises ; where I have sat among their
learned men (for their honour I had), and been counted
happy to be born in such a place of philosophic free-
dom as they supposed England was, while themselves
did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into
which learning amongst them was brought ; that this
was it which had damped the glory of Italian wits ;
that nothing had been there written now these many
years but flattery and fustian."
An allusion in the same passage lets us know that
he also visited, while in Florence, the famous Galileo,
grown old and blind, and a " prisoner to the Inquisi-
tion for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the
Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought." The
impression made upon his mind was evidently a strong
and lasting one,* and served to deepen his hatred of
ecclesiastical tyranny.
The glory of Italian literature, as well as of Italian
art, had perished before the time of Milton's visit, as
the above passage indicates to have been the feeling of
the Italians themselves. With the death of Tasso in
the end of the previous century (1595), their last
* His remembrance of Galileo remained to suggest an image in Para-
dise Lost, Book I., 289, 290—
" The moon, whose orb
Tlirough open glen the Tuscan artist views.
At evening from the top of Fesole. "
190 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
great poet had passed away ; and if sometliing more
than " flattery or fustian " still lingered, the real life of
Italian genius was yet gone. The very picture sug-
gested by the allusions of Milton — the literary acade-
mies which everywhere prevailed — the sonnet- writing,
and panegyrising, and epigrammatical embellishing,
which were the great staple of literary produce, all
point to a period of intellectual decadence. Amidst
these small and rather wearying flatteries, it is inter-
esting and touching to think of the genius of England,
still in its lusty youth, and ripening into one of its
noblest expressions, offering its homage in Milton's
person to the weakened and departing genius of
Italy.
From Florence Milton proceeded by way of Siena
to Eome, where he remained about the same time that
he had done at Florence. The "antiquity and ancient
fame " of the city detained him, although he does not
seem to have formed so many friends here, or to have
lived a life of such free literary and social intercourse
as at Florence. He makes special mention, however,
of one friend, from whom he experienced such kind-
ness as to draw from him afterwards a long letter in
acknowledgment. This was Lucas Holstein, a German,
and Protestant by education, but who had entered
into the service of the nephew of the Pope, Cardinal
Francesco Barberini, and become one of the librarians
of the Vatican. Milton describes in his letter how,
going to the great library without any introduction, he
was received by Holstein, who had heard of him, with
the "utmost courtesy," and conducted by him to the
museum, and allowed to inspect the splendid collec-
tion of books and MSS. Nor did Holstein's kindness
stop here. By his influence Milton was invited to a
MILTON. 191
great entertainment and concert at the house of tlie
cardinal, his patron, who honoured the poet on the
occasion by waiting in person at the door of the saloon
to receive him, and, almost laying hold of him by the
hand, introduced him in a " truly most honourable
manner."
It was probably on this occasion, as his biographers
have conjectured, that he heard the famous Leonora
Baroni sing, to whom he has addressed Latin epigrams,
expressive of the delight with which he heard her.
Her " very voice sounds God," he says, in language
more grand than reverential.
Having completed his stay at Eome, he set out for
Naples. On his way he met a "certain eremite,"
who, evidently captivated by the intelligence of the
young Englishman, introduced him, on his arrival at
Naples, to John Baptist Manso, Marquis of Villa, the
most distinguished of Neapolitans, the friend and bio-
grapher of Tasso, now nearly eighty years of age, but
as keenly interested as ever in genius and poetry.
Milton warmly expresses his obligations to him. " As
long as I stayed," he says, " I experienced from him
the most friendly attentions. He accompanied me
to the various parts of the city, and took me over the
viceroy's palace, and came more than once to my
lodgings to visit me. At my departure he excused
liimself for not having been able to show me the
farther attentions he desired in that city, because that
I would not be more silent in the matter of religion."
A kindly, judicious old man ! who would fain have
been of more service to the young poet, whom he
evidently admired and liked, if he had only been more
cautious with his tongue. Milton fully appreciated
his kindliness, and showed his appreciation, after the
192 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
accustomed manner, by an address in Latin hexame-
ters, in wliicli, in the name of Clio and of great Phos-
bus, he wishes his " Father Manso a long age of
health," and prays that it may be his own lot to have
such a friend as Manso had been to Tasso, should he
ever be able to carry out his aspirations to write, as
the Italian poet had done, a great epic.'"'' Manso
repaid the compliment by the present of two richly
ornamented cups, with an affixed epigram, quaint and
graphic, in allusion to the old story of the beautiful
Anglic youths and Gregory the Great.-(-
It was Milton's original intention to have prolonged
his journey to Greece, but the news of affairs in Eng-
land stayed his farther progress. " While I was de-
sirous," he says, " to cross into Sicily and Greece, the
sad news of civil war coming from England called me
back ; for I considered it disgraceful that, while my
countrymen were fighting at home for liberty, I should
be travelling abroad at ease for intellectual purposes."
Accordingly he retraced his steps to Eome, unheeding
the warnings which had been conveyed to him by the
English merchants at Naples, who had learned by
letters that " snares were being laid for him by the
English Jesuits if he should return to Eome." His
freedom of speech seemed likely to prove dangerous
as well as inconvenient to him. Some of the bold
sentiments that he had vented on his former visit had
probably been repeated in ecclesiastical ears. Threat-
* Not Paradise Lost, however, of which, as yet, he has no thoughts,
but an epic calling back " our native kings and Arthur's stirring wars."
■f- " Joannes Baptista Mansus, Marquis of Villa, Neapolitan, to John
Milton, Englishman.
" Mind, form, grace, face, and morals are perfect. If but thy liead were,
Then not Anglic alone, but truly angelic thou'dst be."
Masson's Milton, 768.
MILTON. 193s
enings had been heard against him, and his friends
took the alarm ; but the Jesuits, after all, did not
take the trouble to molest him. He was allowed to
enter Eome again and depart safely, although he takes
care to assure us that he made no concealment of his
opinions. "What I was, if any one asked, I con-
cealed from no one. If any one in the very city of
the Pope attacked the orthodox religion, I, as before,
for a second space of nearly two months, freely de-
fended it."*
He returned also to Florence to regale himself
once more with the congenial society that he had
left behind him there; and it is supposed to have
been on this second visit to the fair Tuscan city, or,
as some conjecture, as he passed through Bologna on
his way to Venice, that he made the acquaintance of
a Bolognese lady, " young, gentle, loving," from whom
he had great difficulty in tearing himself away. We
know nothing of this love affair save what he himself
tells us in his five Italian sonnets and single canzone
on the subject ; and these give the inner history more
than the external circumstances of his passion. From
one of these sonnets, however (that addressed to his
friend Diodati), we learn that the lady was a genuine
Italian beauty, " with no tresses of gold, or cheeks of
vermeil tincture, but the new type of a foreign beauty,
of carriage high and honourable, and in whose eyes
there beamed the serene splendour of a lovely black,
while her song was so bewitcliing that it might lure
from its middle hemisphere the labouring moon." He
who used to " scorn love and laugh at his snares," had
now fallen and become entangled in them. The wonder
* This was his rule, he says ; but he did not, of his "own accord,
introduce into these places conversation about religion."
194 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
is that, with his poetic heart and florid fiihiess of manly
beauty, he had escaped so long ; and, indeed, it may
be doubted whether this be the first gleam of a tender
interest in his life.* Unhappily he was destined to be-
come too reflectively conscious of this interest, and of
the relations and consequences which spring out of it.
Having visited Venice, and shipped homewards
there a collection of books and music which he had
been diligently making in the course of his journey,
he returned across the Alps to Geneva, where he re-
mained for some time. Of this stage of his tour we
know less than of any other, although the home of
Calvinistic Protestantism must have had singular at-
tractions for Milton. To what extent his residence in
it may have served to develop his ecclesiastical views,
and to deepen his increasing dislike to the Church of
England, it would be diflBcult to say. The great minds
to whom he Avould most naturally have deferred had
all gone by this time. Even the elder Turretin was
dead some years before.-|- His chief associate was John
Diodati, one of the professors of theology, and the uncle
* See Masson's Life, ^. 160. Every one, too, knows the story of the
young foreign lady who, passing in the neighbourhood of Cambridge a
spot where Milton had lain down and fallen asleep \inder a tree, was so
struck with his beauty that she approached to look at him, and left in
his hand unperceived (as she thought) some Italian lines written in
pencil expressive of her admiration ; and how Milton, on awaking, and
being informed who had placed the lines in his hand, conceived a violent
passion for the fair unknown, and afterwards went to Italy in quest
of her, and dreamed of her to the last as his vanished ideal. The
story, of course, is mythical, as in the case of many other poets, of
the visit of the Spirit of Truth and Beauty to our poet, and his unat-
tainable search after its full enjoyment. The later facts of the Bolognese
lady and his Italian visit probably gave some of its colouring to tho
story.
Milton's delicate and blonde beauty, it may be added, was a common
topic of remark while he was at the university, so much so that he was
called " The Lady of his College." f 1631.
MILTON. 195
of the young friend to whom one of his Italian sonnets
was addressed. Diodati was an able and accom-
plished man, but there is no trace of his having exer-
cised any peculiar influence upon Milton. The nephew
had been his form-fellow at St Paul's school. Their
souls had been knit together as those only of young
men are at school and college ; and he now learned
with deep grief of his friend's death during his absence
in Italy. The friendly heart* had been cold in death,
even while he had been recalling its sympathy witli
liim in his love anxieties.
Trom Geneva Milton returned by the " same route as
before " to Paris, and reached England about mid-
summer 1 639, having been absent " a year and three
months, more or less." He closes his own brief nar-
rative of his journey with the memorable words, " Here
again I take God to witness that I lived in all those
places where so much license is permitted, free and
untouched by any kind of vice and profligacy, having
this thought constantly before me, that though I
might escape the eyes of men, I could not escape
those of God."
On his return, he settled in London. Of Horton
we learn no more, and are left to conjecture that his
father had disposed in the interval of his pleasant
residence there, the jpatcriium ms, and gone to live
with his second son, Cristopher, with whom we find
him some time after this at Eeading. At first Milton
lived in lodgings, but very soon he removed to a house
of his own, " sufficiently large," as he says, " for him-
self and his books." This house was in Aldersgate
Street, and stood at the end of an entry. It was one
of many houses of the sort at this time in London,
* Pectus amicus nostri, says Milton to Diodati in one of his letters.
196 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
called "garden houses," removed by their position
from the noise of the streets, and was, as his nephew
says, " the fitter for his turn, by the reason of the
privacy, besides that there were few streets in London
more free from noise than that." Here our poet
settled with his books, delighted to resume his " inter-
mitted studies," * and with a cheerful feeling that the
national excitement, now running at its height in the
metropolis, was working out ends dear to his sense
of liberty and his convictions of religion. His own
time of action had not yet come.
In betaking himself to a life of studious retirement
and educational activity, Milton did exactly what be-
came him ; for it was not in outward activity, but
in the realm of thought, that he was destined to influ-
ence the development of the revolution. He knew his
own function sufficiently ; and Johnson's sneer, there-
fore, about his "vapouring away his patriotism in a
private boarding-school," is as inapplicable as it is ill-
natured. He took his two nephews to live with him,
and received a few more pupils, sons of his friends,
to whose education he devoted himself. It was an
employment in which he himself never could have
felt any shame, whatever some of his biographers
may have done ; and Johnson only betrays his own
soreness of feeling in connection with his early and
less happy employment in the same capacity, by
the manner in which he speaks of this portion of
Milton's life.
The course of study which he travelled over with
his pupils was a very extensive and somewhat re-
markable one, — the principle of which was to com-
mmiicate useful information, along with the know-
* Def, Secunda,
MILTON. 197
ledge of Greek and Latin. He read with them ac-
cordingly, with a few exceptions, not what are nsually
called the classics, but such writers as the four Scrip-
tores, Rci Rusticcc, Cato, Varro, Palladius, and Colu-
mella; Pliny's natural history and Celsus; and in
Greek, such poets as Aratus and ApoUonius Eho-
dius.* In addition, he instructed them in mathe-
matics and astronomy, and entered with them on a
course of theological study in Hebrew and Chal-
daic, " so far as to go through the Pentateuch, and
gain an entrance into the Targum;" and in Syriac, so
far as to read some portions of St Matthew's Gospel
in that language. On Sundays he read w\i\\ them in
the Greek Testament, and dictated parts of a system
of divinity, mainly extracted from the Dutch theolo-
gians. Whatever we may otherwise think of such a
system of instruction, it shows a reach and compre-
hensiveness quite Miltonic. It has an air of inde-
pendence too, that in this, as in other matters, was
very characteristic of him. Looking back with some
degree of contempt upon parts of his own scholastic
training, and proudly confident in his own judgment,
he was exactly the man to carry out a new system,
without any regard to the opinions or prejudices of
others. In education, as in social life and government,
Milton was naturally a theorist, reasoning out his
plans with consistent and dogmatic earnestness from
certain main principles.
Aubrey describes him, in his intercourse with his
pupils, as " severe on the one hand," yet also " most
familiar and free in his conversation;" exacting, so far
as application on their part was concerned, yet freely
* These works, Cato, Varro, &c., it will be seen, reappear in his own
Tractate on Education,
198 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
according to tliem the benefit of his advice and assist-
ance. He worked hard along with them, and shared
the frugality of their meals. Once in three or four
weeks, however, he gave himself a "gaudy day,"
which he spent with some young friends, the chief of
whom were Mr Alphry and Mr Miller, "the beaux of
those times," says Phillips, " but nothing nearly so
bad as those nowadays."
But Milton had scarcely begun his studies with his
pupils when he felt himself also called to other and
more important work. Although his patriotism had
not prompted him on his first return to enter actively
into the contest between King and Parliament, yet he
was far too deeply interested in the contest, and had
far too thorough a penetration of its real causes, long
to remain silent. As he himself afterwards said, in
the noblest of his early prose writings on the sub-
ject,* his knowledge was a "burden" to him. He
felt that God had given him, " in more than the
scantiest measure," to know something distinctly of
him and of his true worship, and that the obligation
lay on him to speak out what he knew. It was the
condition of the Church that now, as before, chiefly
occupied his attention. He and many others felt
that it was the prelatical tyranny of recent years that,
more than anything else, had afflicted the country.
The ecclesiastical clique that had ruled the King, and,
by its base and petty tyrannies, insulted the national
Protestant feeling, had long been the object of his
detestation. This detestation had been augmented
into an anti-Episcopal feeling of the strongest cha-
racter, due in some degree, perhaps, to his residence
in Geneva. At length his convictions became so
* Second Book of the Reason of Church Government againsl Prelaty.
MILTON. 199
urgent on the subject that lie could no longer forbear
to utter them. He thought how miserable an account
he would be able to give of himself, ''what stories he
should hear within himself all his life after, of dis-
courage and reproach," if he did not assist the Church
of God in her struggle with her enemies. The voice
of rebuke would be heard by him saying, " Thou hadst
the diligence, the parts, the language of a man, if a
vain subject were to be adorned or beautified ; but
when the cause of God and His Church was to be
pleaded, for which purpose that tongue was given
thee that thou hast, God listened if He could hear thy
voice among his zealous servants, but thou wert dumb
as a beast."
Under the influence of such feelings, Milton pre-
pared himself for the long course of polemical warfare
in which he was to spend the most part of the next
twenty years of his life. With regret he quitted tem-
porarily the high intentions which he had nourished,
of doing something for his country's literature which
it would "not willingly let die." Proudly, and with
that grand consciousness of "his own parts," which was
always remarked in him, he speaks of his plans and
the divine consecration of his genius. " That which
the greatest and choicest wits of Athens, Eome, or
Modern Italy, and these Hebrews of old, did for their
country, I, in my proportion with this, over and above
of being a Christian, might do for mine." This had
been his thought ; but for the present these intentions
were "plucked from him by an abortive and fore-
dated discovery." His "garland and singing-robes
must be laid aside for a time ;" he must clothe himself
with the garments of controversy ; but he promises to
resume his higher function as far " as life and free
200 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADEES.
leisure will extend," when the land shall have "en-
franchised herself from this impertinent yoke of pre-
laty, under whose inquisitorious and tyrannical duncery
no free and splendid wit can ilourish." He was, in-
deed, to keep his promise to resume the singing-robes,
long laid aside, and " soaring in the high reason of his
fancies," to take a loftier poetic ilight than he had yet
done, but in far other circumstances from those he
fondly anticipated !
The polemical wiitings which Milton now published
in rapid succession against Episcopacy, constitute the
first of the three divisions into which his controver-
sial writings divide themselves. A bulky pamphlet
in two books, addressed to a friend under the title of
Reformation in England, and the causes that hitherto
have hindered it, opens the series in 164?!. This is a
vehement attack upon Prelacy as unscriptural and
unprimitive. All his long-harboured hatred to the
system comes out in it. The comparison of the early
church of Ignatius, and even of Cyprian, is pointed
by him to the disadvantage of its later Popish and
prelatic assumptions. "Then did the spirit of unity
and meekness inspire and animate every joint and
sinew of the mystical body ; but now the gravest and
worthiest minister, a true bishop of his fold, shall be
reviled and ruffled by an insulting and only canon-
wise prelate, as if he were some slight, paltry com-
panion ; and the people of God, redeemed and washed
with Christ's blood, and dignified with so many glo-
rious titles of saints and sons in the Gospel, are now
no better reputed than impure ethnics and lay dogs.
Stones, and pillars, and crucifixes, have now the ho-
nour and the alms due to Christ's loving members.
The table of communion now becomes a table of sepa-
MILTON. 201
ration, stands like a walled platform upon the brow
of the quire, fortified with bulwarks, and barricaded
to keep off the profane touch of the laics ; while the
obscene and surfeited priest scruples not to paw and
mammoc the sacramental bread as familiarly as his
tavern biscuit." Such an extract will convey to the
reader a sufficiently lively impression of the strength
and vehemence of spirit which distinguish this first
polemical writing of our author.
Bishop Hall entered the lists as the champion of
his order, and published, in the same year, A71 hmnhle
Remonstrance in favour of Einscopacy. To this an
immediate reply appeared, the joint production of five
Puritan ministers,'" the initials of whose names formed
the word Smectymnuiis, under which appellation the
work appeared.
Archbishop Usher joined in the fray, and devoted
his great learning and patience of inquiry to the in-
vestigation of the right government of tlie Church, and
the defence of Episcopacy against the writers who
had attacked it. The five Puritan ministers were no
match for the tolerant and enlightened prelate, whose
calm wisdom and profound information left them far
behind in the discussion. This consciousness, besides
his own interest in one of the Smectymnuans (his old
tutor, Thomas Young), is supposed to have drawn
Milton again into the field. He felt that he had
thrown down the gauntlet in his first treatise, and
that it behoved him to come to the rescue in a strife
which he had provoked, and regarding which he felt
so deeply. Two further writings accordingly appeared
from his pen still in the same year — the first entitled,
* Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young (Milton's tutor),
Matthew Newcome, and William Spenston.
202 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
Of Prclatical Episcopacy, and wlutlicr it may he de-
duced from the Ajwstolical times hy virtue of those
Testimonies which are cdlcgcd to that purpose in some
late Treatises, one of which goes under the name of
James, ArchMshop of Armagh ; tlie second, The reason
of Church Government urged against Prclaty, in two
"books. The latter is a somewhat extended treatise,
discussing the various points of the argument under
successive heads and chapters, and containing, in the
preface to the second book, that noble and touching
account of his early studies and literary aims, which
has been so often quoted.
Even these works, however, did not exhaust Milton's
labours for the year. He published, further, Animad-
versions upon Bishop Hall's Reply to Smectymnuus.
Having once taken up the pen, he did not let it rest
in his hands. The labour was congenial to him,
although he says he did it "not without a sad and
unwilling anger, not without many hazards." In the
present case he appears to feel that he has gone some-
what beyond the bounds of grave controversy. But
a bishop acts upon him for the present with a magical
force of indignation. His invective dilates, and his
scorn lashes itself into a wilder fury, whenever the
object crosses his intellectual vision. Even a man
so worthy as Hall, is only "an enemy to truth and
his country's peace," and this all the more that " he
is conceited to have a voluble and smart fluence of
tongue." " I suppose, and more than suppose," he
adds, " it will be nothing disagreeing from Christian
meekness to handle such a one in a rougher accent,
and to send home his haughtiness well besprinkled
with his own holy water."
His freedom and roughness of speech called forth
MILTON. 203
a swift and unsparing reply, Avritten, as was sup-
posed, by a son of the bishop. Tliis reply bore the
title of A Modest Confutation against a Slanderous
and Scurrilous Lihel, and retorted Milton's animad-
versions by a vehement and somewhat disgraceful
attack upon his character. Stung by the " rancour
of an evil tongue," he published his Apology for
Smectijmnuus, the most elevated of all his writings on
this subject, especially in the introduction, where he
replies to the assault upon his character, in a tone of
disdainful magnanimity very characteristic. When-
ever he strikes the chord of his own feelings, and
the personal or moral interest of his theme sways
him, it is observable how his tone rises, how his
thoughts attain a loftier sweep, and his language shows
a richer and grander strength. In fair argument, — in
detailed rejoinder, — he is frequently weak and coarse.
His weapons are, as it were, too heavy for him ; and
he makes rough and aimless gashes at his adversary,
rather than adroitly disables him. His inferiority to
Hall in light fence, in a " coy and flirting style," as he
contemptuously calls it, was evidently rather conscious
to himself, although it was a consciousness far from
humiliating to him. With the proud scorn of a great
mind, he knew that, right or wa-ong, on small matters,
he had the highest and most comprehensive view of
the moral bearings of the question.
Upon the whole, these earlier prose Aviitings of Mil-
ton, although of little critical value in the determina-
tion of the special controversy, are grand specimens
of Puritanical argument. Puritanical they are to
their very core, — in the style of their reasoning, — in
the intensity of their feeling, — in the harsh bitterness
of their assault upon the catholic forms of the Church,
204 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
—in their almost total want of liistorical apprecia-
tion— in everything save, perhaps, the magnificent
luxuriance and swell of style, with gleams of the
old Horton radiance upon it. The fundamental prin-
ciple of Puritanism as to Church government — that
it is "platformed in the Bible,"* is almost everywhere
assumed by him as beyond question; or when it is
argued, as in the two opening chapters of The Rca^
son of Church Government, — argued as if it were a
foregone principle upon which little time need be
wasted. He says expressly in his first pamphlet of
Reformation in England, " If, therefore, the constitu-
tion of the Church be already set down by divine pre-
script, as all sides confess, then can she not be a hand-
maid to wait on civil commodities and respects," — a
singular enough statement in the view of Hooker's
great work, with which he shows his acquaintance in
a later writing-}- of the same year. But while pro-
fessedly adhering to this principle, the very language
in which he expounds it rises above it. The formal is
continually running with him into the moral — the
technical into the spiritual J — and the latter element, as
may be easily imagined in a mind like Milton's, by-
and-by gained the ascendancy, and left far behind his
earlier visions of a definite church polity " taught in
the Gospel."
More even than the argumentative principles of
these treatises, the intense anti-prelatical bitterness
which they display, and the dogmatic unhistorical
tone in which they estimate Catholicism, mark their
Puritanism. The harsh and intemperate coarseness of
* The Reason of Church Government, chap. i.
+ Ibid., chap. ii.
J Ibid., chaps, ii. and iii. — in the latter, when he replies to Usher's
argument drawn from the Pattern of the Law.
MILTON. 205
language in which Milton almost uniformly speaks of
" bishops " is a singular illustration of the times. They
are a " tyrannical crew, and corporation of impostors
that have blinded and abused the world so lono-." *
Their " mouths cannot open without the strong breath
and loud stench of avarice, simony, and sacrHege em-
bezzling the treasury of the Church on painted and
gilded walls of temples, wherein God hatli testified to
have no delight; warming their palace kitchens, and
from thence their unctuous and epicurean paunches,
with the alms of the blind, the lame, the impotent, the
aged, the orphan, the widow/'f Their supposed greed
and gluttony is a special and constantly recurring sub-
ject of attack. I - What a plump endowment," he" says,
"would brotherly equality, matchless temperance, fre-
quent fasting, incessant prayer and preaching, be to
the many-benefice-gaping mouth of a prelate ! what a
relish it would give to his canary-sucking and swan-
e^tmg palate !"§ "A race of Capernaitans," he else-
where exclaims, " senseless of divine doctrine, and
capable only of loaves and belly-cheer ! " || " A man
shall commonly find more savoury knowledge in one
layman than in a dozen of cathedral prelates."
This coarse vehemence of tone, wherever the image
of well-endowed Prelacy crosses his argument, can only
be understood or at all excused when we remember
that it was Prelacy that seemed to Milton, more than
anything else, to have "filled the land with confusion
and violence." The Laudian bishops seemed to him
* Of Reformation, book i. -^ m^i
J It is remarkable how constantly this line of attack runs thron<.h the
anti-Ep,scopal polemics of the seventeenth century. Some of ^le ex
pressions in .vhich it is conveyed, in the Scottish Presbyterian writinc^s
are equally ludicrous and nauseous in their plainness and strength. '
fe Oj Rejornmtwn, book i. y Animadversmis, dr.
206 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
all tliat he painted tliem. The institution with which
they were identified looked to his eyes a mere " tyran-
nical dnncery," a mere " tetter of impurity," without
ancient dignity or catholic beauty. Calvin* does not
take a more extremely polemical view of the rise of
Catholicism, or manifest more incapacity in appreciat-
ing the circumstances of its historical growth, and
its conservative fitness for great practical ends. He
can only see fraud, avarice, faithless and t}Tannical
ambition, in the picture which history luings before
him. The dogmatic present obscured all fair and dis-
cerning appreciation of the Catholic past. In this
respect Milton was a Puritan, scarcely, if at all, above
the popular level of his age. The same spirit shows
itself in his scornful contempt of the Liturgy, and his
abuse of what he calls " Antiquity," — the Patristic
writings, namely, of the fourth and fifth century. The
one still "serves to all the abominations of the anti-
Christian temple," and " while some men cease not to
admire its incomparable frame, he cannot but admire
as fast what they think is become of judgment and
taste in other men, that they can hope to be heard with-
out laughter ;"-f- the other is an "undigested heap and
fry of authors." " Whatsoever time, or the heedless
hand of blind chance, hath drawn down from of old to
this present in her huge drag-net, whether fish or sea-
weed, shells or shrubs, unpicked, unchosen, those are
the fathers." X
In all this Milton shows that while he had imbibed
the moral spirit and Christian earnestness of Puritan-
ism, he had also learned its dogmatic narrowness. The
reaction against Laudism had driven him to an excess
* Institutes, book iv. cap. 6, 7.
f Apology for S-inectymmms, sect. xi. J Of Prelatical E^iscoj)acy.
MILTON. 207
of opinionativeness, and of passionate and resentful feel-
ing on the other side. He had lost the balance of
candid judgment on the great topics in dispute : few
men had it in his day. In knowledge and argument-
ative clearness he must be placed below such men
as Usher or even Hall. There is a wild unfairness in
him that provokes sympathy for his opponenis, and
which is felt to be but ill sustained by his irregular and
loosely-compacted masses of argument. Yet there is also
in his very unfairness a strength of moral indignation,
and crowning his most straggling reasonings a light of
principle, that carries him into higher regions of discus-
sion than any of his contemporary controversialists.
The Apology for Smcctymnuus closed the series ; and
an important incident of his life requires to be narrated
before we can understand the origin and character of
the second phase of his controversial career.
Milton had now attained his thirty-fifth year, and
save his passion for the fair unknown Bolognese, his
heart had remained untouched — so far as is clearly
known. There is no evidence that he was now
seized with any sudden and romantic passion : all the
circumstances of the case rather seem to show the con-
trary. The fact is, that in his new mode of life he
felt the want of some one to assist him in his household
cares and duties ; and this probably more than any-
thing else suggested the thought of marriage to him.
It is a poor ideal of a poet's marriage, but it is the one
that most exactly suits the circumstances. All that is
really known is, that " about Whitsuntide of the year
1643, Milton took a journey into the country, nobody
about him certainly knowing the reason, or that it was
more than a journey of recreation. After a month's
stay, home he returns a married man who set out a
208 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
bachelor — his wife being Mary, the eldest daughter of
Mr Eichard Powell, then a Justice of the Peace, of
Forest Hill, near Shotover, in Oxfordshire." Such is
the statement of his nephew Phillips ; and none of his
biographers have been able to add any clearly ascer-
tained details to the story, * however ingeniously and
happily it may have been filled up by the pleasant
conjectures of the authoress of The Maiden and MaiTicd
Life of Mary Powell. There is reason, indeed, to be-
lieve that he had some previous acquaintance with
the Powells. This is suggested by the story itself, as
well as by the discovery of certain pecuniary relations
long pending between the families. -|- The Miltons,
it will be remembered, came from this very district.
It is very probable, therefore, that Milton's unex-
plained journey about Whitsunday 1643, was by no
* Mr Masson has not yet reached this stage of his task, and his power
of research may throw some clearer light upon the story.
i" The researches of Mr Keightley have discovered that a loan of £500
had been made by Milton's father, in his son's behalf, to Mr Powell. So
far back as the year 1627, the third year of his university course, this
debt is found to have been contracted to Milton by his future father-in-
law. In whatever way we explain this circumstance — even if we suppose
it to have been a pure business transaction on the part of the scrivener
with one who, belonging to his native district, had naturally applied
to him for the money — it serves as a point of connection between the
families. Milton could not help feeling some interest in a family, the
head of which stood indebted to him in such a sum, especially as it is
evident that difficulties arose regarding the jjayment of the debt. We
can well imagine, therefore, that the journey into Oxfordshire in 1643
was by no means Milton's first visit to the Powells. We may even
suppose, with Mr Keightley, that, while staying at Horton, he had
"taken many a ride over to Forest Hill, and that on his return from the
Continent he may have gone down more than once to try to get his
money." Setting up house, as he then was, the money must have been
an object to him, and such occasional journeys to Forest Hill seem ex-
ceedingly natural in the circumstances. The attachment may have thus
gi'own i;p more graduallj' than has been supposed. On such visits he
may have seen and admired Mary Powell, and, forgetful of the debt,
courted and won the daughter.
MILTON. 209f
means liis first visit to "Forest Hill, near Shotover."
But, whether it was so or not, there is too good reason
to conclude that his courtship and marriage were hasty
and ill-considered.
Mrs Milton had scarcely settled in her new residence
when she returned on a visit to her parents, and, not-
withstanding her husband's entreaties, refused again
to leave them. Michaelmas, when she promised to be
back, came, but she remained at home ; her husband's
letters remained unanswered ; and a special messenger,
at length despatched by him to escort her back, was
dismissed with " contumelious treatment." Such are
the well-known facts of this unhappy affair in our
poet's life. Into these bare facts we must read the
best meaning we can.
Incompatibility of temper and character is the natu-
ral explanation, and the one suggested by Milton's
own allusions to the subject. A young girl, the
daughter of a devoted royalist family, married on a
sudden to one whom, at the best, she had more learned
to respect than to love — transported from the happy
country, and a romping household of eight children,
where, Aubrey tells us, there was a "great deal of
company and merriment, as dancing," &c., to the dull
and studious retirement of Aldersgate Street, where
"no company came to her, and she often heard her
nephew cry and be beaten ; " it is easy to understand
how rapidly the elements of incompatibility might
develop themselves in such a combination of cir-
cumstances. It was a sufficiently harsh change for
the young wife, and it would have required a char-
acter of more firmness and elevation than she seems
to have possessed to resist the depressing influences
of the change, and to adapt herself to her new duties.
o
210 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
And Milton was not likely to do liis utmost to smooth
and ligiiten lier new lot for her. Probably he never
thought of such a thing. There is nothing in his
writings that suggests that he would have much deli-
cacy or considerate tenderness in such a matter. In all
his allusions to the subject — even in his poetry — there
is a harshness of tone, and a cold austerity of feeling,
that shows a man more disposed to stand on his rights
than a heart wounded in its most sacred feelings.
He could speak, for example, of his wife as a "mute
and spiritless mate," and exclaim, "who knows but
that the bashful muteness of a virgin may ofttimes
hide all the unHveliness and natural sloth which is
really unfit for conversation ! " Nay, in still stronger
language, with evident pointing to his own marriage,
he deplores the case of one who " finds himself fast
bound to an uncomplying discord, or, as it oft happens,
to an image of earth and phlegm, with whom he looked
to be the copartner of a sweet and gladsome society."
Such expressions no doubt escaped from him under
strong provocation ; but even in such a case they show,
as well as his whole tone on the subject of matrimony,
a want of forbearing gentleness and reserve of feeling.
He was capable of the deepest affection, of the most
genuine kindness — his after-conduct proved this ; but
that bright and delicate courtesy, which seeks to please
woman apart from duty, and which acknowledges de-
votion to the sex, as an imperial sentiment ruling the
necessities of social existence — this is not found in
Milton. It is foreign to his deliberate theory of life ;
it is no part of the radiant investment with which he
surrounds his Eve, or ideal woman.
. How far the fact of his Avife being a royalist * may
. * " The family," Phillips says, " being generally addicted to the cava-
MILTON. 211
liave liacl to do witli the unliappy result, it is difficult
to say. Such an opposition of feeling would not be
without its influence, as in the contrasted and not
less unhappy, although less notorious, case of Hooker.
Hooker's wife was inclined to Puritanism,* and her
temper certainly partook of its less amiable charac-
teristics. None can ever forget the depressing pic-
ture given in Walton's Life, of " Pdchard being called
to rock the cradle," when his two old pupils paid him
a visit at his parsonage. Milton's royalist wife forsook
him ; Hooker's Puritan wife tormented him ; and, be-
yond doubt, the great antipathy which they represented
cut deeply into the heart of society — in many families
setting brother against brother and wife against hus-
band. The Puritan and the Anglican were far more
separate than the Anglican and the Catholic had ever
been. The schism of the former represented the true
disunion produced by the Eeformation in England ;
that of the latter, powerful as it was politically, did
not spring out of any equally wide or clearly marked
divergence. The undertone of sentiment in the Eliza-
bethan Church was, after all, much the same as in the
old Catholic days. Although the monasteries were
suppressed and the power of the Pope denied, the
intellectual and moral spirit of the Church was but
little changed, and the old festivals and order of ser-
vice remained very much the same. But with Puri-
lier party, and some of them possibly engaged in the King's service, who
by this time had his headquarters at Oxford, and was in some prospect
of success, they began to repent them of having matched the eldest
daughter of the family to a person so contrary to them in opinion ; and
thought that it would be a blot on their escutcheon whenever that court
should come to flourish again."
* There is good reason to believe this, for her Puritan friends seem
to have made free with his MSS. after his death. See Keble's Preface
to Oxford edition of Hooker.
212 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
tanism arose a fundamental difference of opinion,
and this difference soon worked itself into all the
forms of religions service and all the relations of social
life. In the very cut of the hair and the mode of
dress it showed itself; and such an influence, pene-
trating the whole framework of society, could not fail
to operate extensively upon the family relations — in
certain cases harmonising and strengthening them, but
in certain other cases embittering and weakening them.
It suggests a striking enough reflection, that the two
intellectual chiefs of the rival systems. Hooker and
Milton, should have tasted in their domestic life the
bitterness of the great schism which, in its opposite
sides, they represented. Standing intellectually in
the van of the struggle, they were made to feel how its
mighty agitations touched their own hearths, and its
unhappiness pierced to their own hearts.
The series of pablications which the unfortunate
result of Milton's marriage called forth, are among the
least interesting and valuable of his writings. They
bear too obviously the trace of the special circum-
stances which called them forth, and are, throughout,
far too arbitrary and personal in their attempt to settle
a practical question of grave and difficult import.
He has himself sought to vindicate for them a place in
the great intellectual plan which he set before him, of
maintaining the cause of liberty in all its essential
bearings. "I perceived," he says, "that there were
three species of liberty which are essential to the hap-
piness of social life — religious, domestic, and civil ; and
having already written concerning the first, and the
magistrates being strenuously active in obtaining the
third, I determined to turn my attention to the second,
or the domestic species. As this seemed to involve
MILTON. 213
three material questions — the conditions of the conjugal
tie, the education of children, and the right of free
speculation — I undertook the examination of each of
them, and began by explaining my sentiments, not
only concerning the matrimonial rite, but concerning
its dissolution, shoukl this become necessary.""' Such
a task may very well have presented itself to a mind
like Milton's. The question of divorce, as merely one
aspect of the great question of liberty, may have pre-
viously interested him ; but it is, nevertheless, plain
that his writings on the subject, which followed one
another in quick succession from 1644 to 1C45, sprang
directly out of his own case, as they everywhere bear
the stamp of it. The general principle which they
each and all maintain was the one involved in his own
marriage — the principle, namely, "that indisposition,
unfitness or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause
of nature unchangeable, hindering, and ever likely to
hinder, the main benefits of conjugal society, which are
solace and peace," is a sufficient reason of divorce.
In four treatises, f published within little more than a
year, he advocated this principle, now and then, in its
statement and illustration, rising into an elevated
strain of moral reflection or of indignant sentiment ;
but, as a whole, in a manner tedious, minute, and un-
satisfactory. His tendency to theorise and carry out
* Defensio Secunda.
•f "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce restored to the good of
both Sexes from the Bondage of Canon Law" (1644)— in which year two
editions appeared, addressed to " The Parliament of England with
Assembly."
" The Judgment of Martin Bucer touching Divorce" (1644).
" Tetrachordon ; or Expositions upon the Four Chief Places in Scrip-
ture which treat of Marriage or Nullities of Marriage," (1645) ; also ad-
dressed to the Parliament. And,
" Colasterion ; a Eeply to a nameless Answer concerning the Doctrine
and Discipline of Divorce," 1645.
214 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
liis deductions arbitrarily from a single point of view,
is especially conspicuous in these writings ; and, coming
in contact with a subject which obstinately resists its
application, it often leads him into great weakness of
argument.
Viewing the subject ideally and in the abstract, all
would admit the force of Milton's argument, that a
marriage which is not one of heart and sympathy,
securing to the husband and wife respectively, "against
all the sorrows and casualties of this life," " an intimate
and speaking help, a ready and reviving associate," is
no true marriage, but " a perpetual nullity of love and
contentment — a solitude and dead vacation of all
acceptable conversing. " " When love finds itself
utterly unmatched and justly vanishes, — nay, rather
cannot but vanish," — then, though the artificial bond
may subsist, a union, such as alone becomes two ration-
al beings, is already dissolved. The outward relation
may continue, but "not holy, not pure," not beseeming
the sacred character of marriage. ("For in human
actions the soul is the agent." " Intellective prin-
ciples " must form their spring, else they " participate
of nothing rational, but that which the field or the fold
equals.")* In the region of mere idea and moral prin-
ciple this is incontrovertible, but, unhappily for the
argument, the question is not an ideal, but an entirely
practical one. In so far as marriage is an object of
legislation, it cannot be dealt with in the abstract, or
on any principle of sentiment. Society can only take
cognisance of a tangible bond, constituted by obvious
* The whole of this passage from tlie Tetracliordon gives a very good
idea of Milton's main argument. In its mixed beauty and coai'seness of
expression it is also interesting, in a literary point of view, as a speci-
men of his style and of that of his age in such matters.
MILTON. 215
sanctions, and subsisting so long as certain plain con-
ditions involved in the bond are fulfilled, or may be
fulfilled. The State cannot, apart from all higher views
of the question, provide for the operation of the varying
influences of human temper and feeling, or, as our author
^YOuld have it, show " some conscionable and tender
pity for those who have unwarily, in a thing they never
practised before, made themselves the bondmen of a
luckless and helpless matrimony." * Men and women
must protect themselves in the first instance ; and if it
be true that " the soberest and best governed men are
least practised in these affairs, and that, for all the
wariness that can be used, it may yet befall a discreet
man to be mistaken in his choice," society is, never-
theless, not bound to make allowance for such mistakes,
where they would clearly tend to interfere with its
order and stability. It is only when a greater injury
and disturbance to this order would arise from the
maintenance of the marriage tie than from its dissolu-
tion— as in the case of adultery — that society can con-
sent to its dissolution. It is only by some abnegation
of man's absolute rights that he enjoys the benefits of
social intercourse at all ; and a man cannot be free to
consult his own mere inclination — which is what is
really implied in his argument — in the disruption of
so vital a bond as marriage, so long as he remains
a member of the community whose sanctions guarantee
the sacredness and security of the bond while it lasts.
He cannot have the privileges of civilisation and at the
same time the license of an unfettered individuality.
Milton would, no doubt, have repudiated such an in-
terpretation of his theory— in fact, he does so ; still, it
seems impossible to distinguish his principle logically
* Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.
216 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
carried out, from that of an absolute individual liberty
to retire from the marriage-contract so soon as any
distaste of mind or of nature may spring up between
married persons. To a great extent, moreover, the
question is argued by him all on one side — that of the
man ; marriage is regarded especially with a view to
Ms advantage, and its breach with a view to his con-
venience. There is a haughty and cold indifference to
the rights on the other side, as well as to all the grave
difficulties and anxieties connected with children,
which adds to the unsatisfactoriness of his argument
while weakening its interest.
In these few remarks we have merely looked at
Milton's argument in its relation to the rights and
obligations of society. Its relation to Scripture sug-
gests another view, which he is far from having
evaded, but the difficulties of which it cannot be said
that he has any more satisfactorily met and resolved.
The truth is, that the question was one of too delicate
and practical a character for his genius, which ranged
freely among principles, and possessed a grand power
of theoretic and eloquent deduction, but which was
unaccommodating and unyielding in its application
to the problems of practical life.
We see the full force of his genius at this time
displayed in a writing of a very different character —
viz. his famous Areo])agitica, or Speech for the Liberty
of Unlicensed Printing, published and addressed to the
Parliament in the same year, 1644. The subject ob-
viously fell within his great plan of discussing the
whole question of liberty, and he had long reflected
on it accidentally, as the Areopccgitica was called
forth by a special Act of the Parliament to which
MILTON. 217
it was addressed* Far less complicated than the sub-
ject of divorce, and admitting of a far more direct
and conclusive appeal to the great principles which
lie at the foundation of human freedom, Milton's task,
in the present case, if not more congenial to his feelings,
was far more suited to his intellect. Starting on that
elevated key which was natural to him, which was the
appropriate expression of the lofty pitch at which his
ideas mostly ranged, he scarcely drops this key through-
out the treatise. His thoughts march, from beginning
to end, at the same high level, only swelling here and
there into a richer and more felicitous fulness. Nothimj
can be grander or more expressive than many of the
separate sayings -f* which enrich the style of this treatise,
and give to it dignity, force, and pregnancy, condensing
into a massive gem-like pith wide trains of advancing
argument. There are none of his prose writings less
. temporary, less imbued with the narrowness and acci-
dents of his own personal feeling, or less bound to the
mere temper and tendencies of his time; and this is
shown in the mere fact of its continued popularity (if
we can use such a word in Milton's case at all), while
his other prose writings, for the most part, are forgot-
ten and unread, save by the student.
* The Parliament, under the influence of the Presbyterians, had set
forth an order " to regulate printing : that no book, pam23hlet or paper,
shall be henceforth printed, unless the same be first licensed by such, or
at least one of such, as shall be thereto appointed."
■f As, for examf)le, when he defends the readingrof all sorts of books
by the example of holy Chrysostom, who nightly studied Aristophanes,
and " had the art to cleanse a scurrilous vehemence into the stijle of a rousing
sermon ; " or again, when he says, that a " man may he a heretic in the
truth, and if he believes things only because his pastor says, or the
' Assembly ' so determine, without knowing other reason, though his
belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes a heresy j" or, when
again he tells us that "opinion in good men is but knowledge in the laakiwj."
218 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
The great principles expounded in tlie Areopagitica
are as true and as needful now as they were in Mil-
ton's own day ; the very illustrations by which lie
enforces them have, with a slight change of colouring,
a vividness of application that, after two centuries,
and all our boasted Protestantism, is perfectly start-
ling. Take merely one as a specimen in which he pic-
tures certain " Protestants and professors" in his day :
" They live and die," he says, " in as errant and im-
plicit a faith as any lay Papist of Loretto ; men who,
unable themselves to bear the burden of their religion,
find out some factor, to whose care and credit they
commit it — some divine of note and education, to
whom they assign the whole warehouse of their reli-
gion, with all the locks and keys ; so that a man may
say his religion is no more within himself, but comes and
goes according as that good man frequents bis house.
He entertains liim, gives him gifts, feeds him, lodges
him ; his religion comes home at night, prays, is libe-
rally supped, and sumptuously laid to sleep ; rises, is
saluted, and, after the malmsey, or some well-spiced
bruage, and better breakfasted than he whose morning
appetite would have gladly fed on green figs between
Bethany and Jerusalem, his religion walks abroad at
eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop, trad-
ing all day without his religion." There are few things
more exquisite than this, both in its descriptive truth,
and its broad yet covert sarcasm ; while it paints to the
life the spirit which still infests much of our Protest-
antism. Tliere are many passages equally felicitous,
clothing the deepest truths in a diction of mingled
luxuriance, sweetness, and power.* The treatise claims
* It is impossible to give an anthology of siicli pieces ; but we may
instance that in which he speaks of the knowledge of good and evil in
MILTON. 219
tlie ever-renewed study of tlie friends of Protestant
freedom. Nowhere are its principles more fairly and
eloquently expounded ; and even the germ of all that
is really just and good in the most recent discussions
of " Liberty " will be found in it.
Still, in the same year, he published his "Trac-
tate on Education," addressed to Master Samuel Hart-
lib, in which he advocates a plan of instruction similar
to that which he had conducted with his nephew.
There are some features of the plan narrow and erro-
neous ; but there are others, such as the transference
of logic and literary composition from the beginning
to the close of the scholastic career, and the advantages
which he attributes to a musical training, eminently
suggestive. The " Tractate " is brief and pleasing in
its style, with much of the same pungent richness of
thought and observation that distinguishes the Arcopa-
gitica.
The publication of these writings, with those on the
subject of divorce, all during a space of eighteen
months,'"' while Mrs Milton remained with her friends
at Forest Hill, must have left Milton little leisure to
seek for any other solace in his solitude. According
to the story, however, he is represented as at length
the world as leaping forth "out of the rind of one apple tasted as two
twins cleaving together," and breaks forth into the strain — "I cannot
praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed, that
never seeks out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where
that immortal garland is to be ran for not without dust and heat."
Elsewhere he says grandly, and in the highest spirit of freedom,
" Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the
earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and pro-
hibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple. Who
ever knew truth put to the ^vorse in a free and open encounter i Her confut-
ing is the lest suppressing."
* The first edition of his Poems — those of the Horton period, with a
few others, also appeared in 1645.
220 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
desirous of carrying Ms principles of divorce into prac-
tice ; and, as accordingly, paying his addresses to a
young lady, daugliter of a Dr Davis. Whether the
rumour of such an event had any effect in piquing the
jealousy of his wife, we cannot say. Other and better
known circumstances — the ruin of her family with
that of the Eoyal cause, and the surrender of Oxford in
1646 — led her to think of the possiblity of a reconcilia-
tion, notwithstanding the apparent gulf which his writ-
ings had placed between them. Milton's own friends,
probably alarmed at the practical turn which his
speculations seemed about to assume, concurred in her
intention, and did what they could to bring it to a pros-
perous issue. One day when he was visiting a rela-
tive, named Blackborough, in the lane of St Martin's-le-
Grand, his wife, who had concealed herself in an inner
room, came forth, and threw herself at his feet implor-
ing forgiveness. The sternness of his anger at first
restrained the boon ; but at length he relented,* and
took her again to his home and heart. She returned,
not to the house in Aldersgate Street, but to a larger
house which he had taken, and was then preparing at
Barbican.
Here Milton continued his old vocation, and we are
left to infer that his reconciliation with his wife con-
tinued cordial. It is not likely that he could have
* The following lines from the tenth book of Paradise Lo^t almost
certainly point to, if they do not really describe, the scene which oc-
curred on this occasion between Milton and his wife : —
" She ended, weeping ; and her lowly plight,
Immovable till peace obtain'd from fault
Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wi'ought
Commiseration : soon his heart relented
Towards her, his life so late, and sole delight,
Now at his feet submissive in distress :
Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking,
His counsel, whom she had displeased, his aid ;
As one disarm'd, his anger all he lost."
MILTON. 221
found his ideal of matrimony realised in one whose
sympathies and tastes were evidently in many re-
spects opposed to his own. He made the best of his
position, however, and in the issue he proved himself
a warm friend to his wife's family. When the disasters
of the civil war drove the Powells from their Oxford-
shire home, and entirely ruined them for the time, he
received the whole of them into his house, where, in
the course of a few months, his father-in-law seems to
have died.
Tliis addition to his household must have par-
tially mterrupted his scholastic labours, or at least
interfered with their privacy and efficiency. Phillips
indicates as much when he tells us, that after their
removal the house looked again " like a house of the
Muses only." The accession of scholars, he confesses
at the same time, had not been great ; and this pro-
bably led to Milton's removal in the end of the year
1669 to a smaller house in Holborn, "with its back
opening into Lincoln's-Inn-Fields." Before this re-
moval his eldest daughter Anne was born on the 29th
July 1646 ; the second daughter, Mary, was born in
the house in Holborn on the 25th of October 1648.
Phillips has some absurd story of a plan of mak-
ing Milton, at this time, an officer in Waller's army.
" He is much mistaken," he says, " if there was not
about this time a design of making him an adjutant-
general in Sir William Waller s army ; but the new
modelling of the army proved an obstruction to this
design. " This story is improbable, both in relation to
Waller and to Milton, the former of whom was a Pres-
byterian, and not likely therefore to have courted the
assistance of one whose wider sympathies with the
revolutionary movement were rapidly carrying him
222 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
beyond Presbyterianism ; while the latter was not
very likely to have thought of such a position. It
labours under the farther improbability of not answer-
ing to the circumstances, for the new modelling of the
army was by this time completed, or nearly so, and
Waller superseded in his command.*
From the time of his removal to Holborn, Milton
seems to have gradually abandoned his scholastic
function and confined himself to his studies. His
pupils either fell of, or, on his father's death in March
-1647, he may not have had the same occasion to
employ himself in this manner. His literary activity
is not found to correspond with his supposed leisure.
The three years from the commencement of 1646 are
entirely barren in authorship, although he is supposed
during this period to have written the four first books
of his History of England. Probably several of the
conipilations-|- which he afterwards published, and of
which he seems to have been fond, owe their origin to
this period.
In the beginning of the year 1649 we find him
busy with his first treatise regarding the King, which
opens the third series of his controversial writings. It
was intended to bear upon the position and fate of
Charles, but it was not published till a week or two
after his execution. Its extended title sets forth in
full its object: " The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,
proving that it is lawful, and hath hecn held so through
all ages, for any who have the power to call to account a
tyrant or wicked King, and, after due conviction, to de-
* Phillips fixes the time, in Mr Keightley's notes, to have been " not
long after the march of Fairfax and Cromwell through the city"
(August 1647).
f For example, besides his History of England, his Accidence Com-
menced Grammar, and his Brief History of Moscovia.
MILTON". 223
pose and put hwi to death, if the ordinary Magistrate
have neglected or denied to do it; and they who of late
so much blame deposing (i.e. the Presbyterians) are the
rtien that did it themselves."
The general tone of this treatise shows how com-
pletely Milton had identified himself with the extreme
movement party in the revolution. His mind was not
one to shrink from the obvious course of events ; its
convictions were too stern, and its impulses too con-
fident ; it rose, rather, and felt itself stronger in the
face of so great a crisis. He has no patience with the
Presbyterians, who, having brought affairs to such a
conclusion by their conduct to the King, refuse to con-
cur in his condemnation, and " begin to swerve and
almost shiver at the majesty and grandeur of some
noble deed, as if they were nearly entered into some
great sin." To him, as to the great leader of the move-
ment, the course of affairs was their own justification.
The Parliament and army needed no other vindication
than the "glorious way wherein justice and victory
had set them ; the only warrants through all ages,
next under immediate revelation, to exercise supreme
power."
He argues the theses with which he has inscribed
the treatise from two points of view; first, from the
nature of the kingly ofiice, as being " only derivative,
transferred, and committed to the holder in trust, from
the people, to the common good of them all, in whom
the power yet remains fundamentally, and cannot be
taken from them without a violation of their natural
birthright ; " and, secondly, from such historical " ex-
amples" as seemed to him to justify it. The argument,
conducted from the first point of view, where he
handles principles, is, as usual, far more true and
224 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
effective than the historical argument to which the
necessities of the case, as regarded by his adversaries
more than his own inchnation, compelled liim. The
former (barring its iterations of a hypothetical formal
covenant between people and their rulers, which so
long continued a staple theory of political waiters) is
one of the most clear and consistent arguments in
Milton's controversial writings, unembarrassed by any
trace of passion, and free from that generalising vague-
ness and rigour of statement with which he generally
covers any weak position.
The treatise had but little effect in its intended
direction of " composing the minds of the people."
It had, however, a decided effect upon the Council of
State, with Bradshaw, Milton's kinsman, at its head.
It is even possible that Bradshaw may have had some-
thing to do with the suggestion of the defence of the
conduct of the army and Parliament. In any case,
such a defence could not pass unacknowledged by
those whom it so deeply concerned. Its author was a
man whose services could be obviously turned to good
account. He had both the heart and the ability to aid
them as few had. The office of Foreign or Latin
Secretary to the Council of State, was accordingly
offered to Milton, and accepted by him, at a salary of
about £290 per annum. The date of his appointment
is the 18th of March 1649.
His special business in this capacity was to pre-
pare, in Latin, the foreign correspondence of the
Council; and forty-six letters, which were published
after his death, so far represent his labours in this
direction. With a view to these labours, and in order
to be near their scene, he removed from Holborn to
lodgings at Charing Cross ; and by the end of the year
MILTON". 225
(1649) lie was established in lodgings at Whitehall,*
where he remained for a year and a half.
Milton's ordinary duties, however, as Secretary to
the Council of State, formed the least notable part
of the work wliich devolved upon him in his new
vocation. Of all his remaining prose writings, ■{- the
most elaborate and important are directly connected
with his office, and grew out of it. These writings,
more than anything else, identify him with the events
of his time. They are in a manner national documents,
in which he professed not merely to ex2D0und his own
sentiments (he never allows the reader, in any of them,
to forget his own lofty personality), but, moreover, to
represent the nation and people of England. We see
in them the greatest intellect of the age dealing with
its greatest problems — contemplating the great revolu-
tionary movement still sweeping its widening course in
these memorable years, when the highest authority of
the State having been struck down, the master that was
to seize the slackening reins of government had not yet ,
taken them in hand — and from the very heart of the
* His residence at Whitehall appears to have been a subject of dispute
between the Parliament and the Council, as indicated by various orders
of Council in the course of 1651. By one of these, of date the 11th of
June, a Committee is instructed to go to the Committee of Parliament
for Whitehall, to acquaint them with the case of Mr Milton, "in regard
of their positive order for his speedy remove out of his lodgings in
Whitehall ; and to endeavour with them that the said Mr Milton be
continued where he is in regard of the employment which he is in to the
Council, which necessitate him to reside near to the Council." This
negotiation, however, does not seem to have had a favourable issue ; for
we find Milton's household again " soon after," transported to a " pretty
garden house in Petty France, in Westminster, next door to the Lord
Scudamore's opening into St James's Park." Here he remained till the
Eestoration.
'I' His observations on the Articles of Peace between the Earl of
Ormond and the Irish were published before his appointment to the
oflBce.
P
226 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
movement directing its agitations, and vindicating its
excesses.
There can be no doubt of tlie grandeur of the in-
tellect thus employed, and of the deep interest attach-
ing to its reflections. The views of Milton are valuable
in virtue of the mere compass and earnestness of his
powers ; it is something to know what the highest
genius in England thought of the mighty events
amidst which he was living. But with the fullest
admission of this, there are few who will recognise
in him any adequate title to represent and interpret
the mixed feelings of the people of England at this
crisis. Isolated in the very greatness of his powers,
dogmatical in his convictions, austere in his sympa-
thies, and self-concentrated and proudly independent
in all his moral impulses, we feel as we read these
apologetic writings that their author is as ever in-
tensely one-sided. Not merely does he not do justice
to any opposite point of view from his own, but he
shows the most rude and violent contempt for it. He
speaks as one who, standing amid a crowd, and pro-
fessing to represent it, yet takes counsel only with
his own heart, and in the very act of representation
asserts his solitary and sublime personality. He could
not be sympathetic with the common hearts around
him ; he could not understand the varying pulses of
the popular feeling, as it veered lately in high resent-
ment against the King, and now in deep and pathetic
sorrow over his tragic end. This was to him the evi-
dence of a mere " voluntary and beloved baseness,"
which could not appreciate the reality of a national
mission nor the glory of a great cause.
This one-sidedness, frequently weak in its bitter-
ness, is especially characteristic of his Iconodastcs,
MILTON". 227
in answer to the famous defence and description of
the King in his sufferings, entitled Eikon BasiliM.
There is none of Milton's writings less pleasing than
this. The subject was unfortunate, and scarcely to he
handled save with a delicacy of criticism, and a point
of grave and pathetic satire, of which he was no master.
The ingenious misrepresentations of the book to which
he was replying, and the attempt which it makes to
cover Charles's delinquencies by an appeal to his per-
sonal virtues and diligent pietisms, might have been
successfully met by an exposure, respectful yet keen,
and tender while just ; but Milton is simply insulting
in the harshness and bitter frigidity of his invective.
He assails the memory of the " martyr " with a savage
intemperance, which excites our pity far more than it
convinces our judgment. The description given of him
in the Eiko7i, is " a conceited portraiture drawn out to
the full measure of a masking scene, and set there to
catch fools and silly gazers." " Its quaint emeblms and
devices " are " begged from the old pageantry of some
Twelfth Night's Entertainment at Whitehall." Eidi-
culing the affectionate cares of Cliarles's attendants,
his only grief is " that the head was not shook off to
the best advantage and commodity of them that held it
by the hair." The prayer which he delivered to Bishop
Juxon, immediately before his death, is alleged to be
stolen, word for word, from the mouth of a heathen
woman praying to a heathen god, and that in no serious
book, but in the "vain amatorious poem" of Sir Philip
Sidney's ^rca^^m,* "as if Charles and his friends thought
no better of the living God tlian a buzzard idol, fit to
be so served and worshipped in reversion with the pol-
luted oils and refuse of Arcadias and romances."
* The prayer of Pamel^ in the A rcadia.
228 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADEES.
There is tlironghout the whole of the treatise a wan-
ton vein of personal criticism npon the King, — his
character, — his religion, — " the superstitions rigour of
his Sunday's chapel, and the licentious remissness
of his Sunday's theatre," — even his family relations.
The Presbyterians, as sharing in the lamentation for
the death of Charles, come in, as constantly in this
series of writings, for the lash of a vehement scorn,
"Their pulpit stuff, from first to last, hath been the
doctrine and perpetual infusion of servility and wretch-
edness to all their hearers, and their lives the type of
worldliness and hypocrisy, without the least true
pattern of A^irtue, righteousness, or self-denial in their
whole practice." This is sufficiently sweeping, and
well shows the one-sidedness and passionate depth of
Milton's polemical nature. By the mere force of big
abuse, and the heavy march of a reviling rhetoric, he
tries to crush his adversaries, never seeking any points
of appreciating or tolerant interest with them, never
sparing in tenderness any feature of apparent excel-
lence, but dealing his blows with indiscriminating
roundness, as if he delighted in the havoc and pain
that he inflicted.
His two great Latin works — his first and second
Defences for the Peoijle of Englard — are of a higher
character than the Iconodastcs. In them he deals
with the King's deposition and death more on the broad
and general grounds of the first elements of govern-
ment. On such grounds Salmasius was no match for
him ; and the literary world of his day did not present
his match. Even Grotius, if we could conceive him
engaged in the controversy, could not have brought to
it a more enlarged, comprehensive, and enlightened
grasp of the great principles of political science than
MILTON. 229
our author. He is found, like all tlie writers of his
time, mingling up the discussion of these principles
with scriptural precedents, and trying to prop his cause
on the dogmatic authority of the biblical text, as well
as on the clear basis of natural reason and justice.
This, which the controversial methods of his time
required, does not add value to his treatise ; it is the
weak and failing point in it. Its real force arises
from the degree in which it carries the discussion
beyond such formal pedantries of the schools and the
details of theological sophistry into the free atmos-
phere of moral and political argument. In this
higher region, as always, lies his strength. Here
was his real triumph against Salmasius, who — a
mere scholar and grammarian — nowhere ventured
beyond the shallow dogmatisms of scholastic tradi-
tion, and sought to defend the excesses of tyranny
by the worn-out falsehoods of literary j^edantry and
scriptural assumption.
The genius and force of Milton's Defence were uni-
versally acknowledged. He himself tells us that he
received the congratulations of all the foreign minis-
ters in London upon its publication. Queen Christina
could not help complimenting it to the face of Salma-
sius ; and the veteran grammarian is said to have sick-
ened and died with chagrin at the triumph of his rival.
It may have been that his opponent's unsparing invec-
tive did touch him to the heart, and shorten his days.
On both sides the amenities of controversy were un-
kno^vn ; and with all our respect for Milton's genius,
and admiration for the magnificent argument which
his Defence embodies, it must be confessed that the
coarse scurrility in which it abounds is often very trying
and offensive. " Eogue," " puppy," " foul-mouthed
230 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
and infamous wretch,"* are among the epithets he
applies to the scholar at Leyclen, whose ears had been
long accustomed to the incense of flattery and the en-
comiums of disciples. In the very preface he attacks
with ridicule what Salmasius and all his friends no
doubt considered his strong point — his latinity. Sal-
masius had used the word persona in the modern sense
of person ; Milton exclaims, " Qute unquam latinitas
sic locuta est," and then makes heavy mirth over the
idea of murder being committed on the mask of a
king.-f-
This tone of personal abuse rises in the second De-
fensioiyro Populo Avglicano into a still higher and more
vehement key ; but in this case Milton received special
provocation. His own character had been maliciously
and disgracefully attacked ; and although that " meek
silence and sufferance," and the eloquence of deeds
" against faltering words," of which he elsewhere speaks,
would now, and always, have better become him, yet
we cannot wonder that when he felt himself so bitterly
aggrieved he should have poured forth the vials of his
* Those are merely specimens. His vocabulary of abuse is tremen-
dous— directed not only against Salmasius himself, but against his wife.
" Domi Lyciscam habes," he says, " qufe tibi misere dominatur," c. iii.
f In iMrsona regis. Salmasius had complained that executioners in
vizards (personati carnifices) had cut off the King's head. " Quid hoc
homine facias?" exclaims Milton ; " questus est sujjra ' de paricidio in
persona regis admisso ; ' nunc in persona carnificisadmissumqueritur" —
(What sort of a fellow is this ? having complained above of murder per-
petrated on the mask of a king, he now comjDlains that it was commit-
ted in the mask of an executioner.) In the reply which Salmasius left
behind him, and which was not published till the Restoration, he eagerly
defends his latinity, and retorts Milton's scurrility with reproaches on
the subject of his blindness. It is a sufficiently sad spectacle; and
Johnson's blunt comment upon it brings out all its odium and absurdity.
" As Salmasius," he says, "reproached Milton with losing his eyes in the
quarrel, Milton delighted himself with the belief that he had shortened
Salmasius's life ; and both perhaps with more ma;lignity than reason."
MILTON. 231
most noisome wrath in rei3ly. The unfortunate issue
of the affair was, that he happened to be mistaken in
the object upon whom he poured his opprobrium. His
defence against the work of Salmasius appeared in the
€nd of 1650. Immediately in the following year a
reply appeared, which he attributed to Bishop Bram-
hall, and which he did not consider worthy of calling
forth any confutation from his own pen. This he left
to his nephew, John Phillips, whose work he corrected
and sanctioned. In the course of the following year,
however, a work appeared abroad, bearing the title
Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Ccelum adversus Paricidas
Anglicanos, in which his character, and even his
personal appearance, were held up to infamy. The
real author of this attack was a Frenchman, Peter
Dumoulin, afterwards rewarded with a prebendal stall
in Canterbury; but Milton got somehow persuaded
that its author was a Scotchman of the name of More,
who was Greek Professor at Geneva when he visited it
in 1639. All the personal rancour of the Defensio
Secunda is suggested by this idea of More's authorship,
and never was poor wretch so impaled on the horns
of a wild but lofty abuse. Nothing can exceed the
proud bitterness — the sublime scurrilousness of the
tone. His name is played with — morns being the
Latin for a mulberry-tree ; his amours are depicted ;
his whole history is set in the light of the most cutting
sarcasm. It is amusing yet pitiful to see a genius like
Milton's dragged through the mire after an unknown
libeller, and missing its aim after all. Nor was he
contented with this defence ; in the following year
(1655) he returned to the subject, and penned a pam-,
phlet expressly in self-defence, under the title Auctoris
pro se Defensio contra Alexandrum^ Morum Ecclesiasten;
232 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
and this having called More himself more prominently
into the field," he aimed at him a further Rcsponsio.
A controversy which had begun in a noble instinct of
patriotism, and the principles involved in which had
tasked his great powers to the utmost, unhappily de-
generated into an obscure squabble as to character, in
which our author could only wdn a triumph by calling
names with a more lusty and powerful tongue, if also
with more reason, than his antagonist.
After these labours, which carry us on to the year
1655, Milton appears to have rested from authorship
for some time. There is reason to think that he had
exhausted himself in these arduous preparations, and
that his impaired health needed rest and recreation.
Already, in the preface to his First Defence, he com-
plains of his bodily indisposition ; that he is so weak in
body as to be forced to write by piecemeal, and to break
off "almost every hour," while the subject was one that
required all his stretch of mind. The special " bodily
indisposition" to which he alludes w^as probably the
increasing failure of his sight. He himself believed
that his blindness was accelerated by his labours on
that occasion ; and the reproaches of Salmasius and of
the author of the attack upon him, which he attributed
to More, seem to indicate that the public had the same
feeling. He was totally blind in the year 1653, if not
previously. His blindness arose from paralysis of the
optic nerve, and was the result of his intense habits of
study, induced upon original weakness. It did not
affect the appearance of his eyes, which remained free
from all speck or discolouring, — the same dark grey
orbs looking forth into the world of life and nature, al-
* More had also replied to the first attack. See Keightley's Life,
p. 49.
MILTON. 233
tliougli no longer able to flasli forth the rich meanings
in which they pictured themselves to his imagination.
About the same period that his decaying sight became
blindness, another calamity overtook him in the loss of
his wife. There is no reason to think, after all that
happened, that this was not a calamity to him. Dur-
ing eight or nine years of wedded life, those two hearts,
bitterly as they had been alienated, and mortifying as
many of the associations connected with their rupture
had been, must have yet contracted many ties of affec-
tionate union, the dissolution of which could not but
bring sharp grief to the survivor. Milton was left
alone in his blindness, Avith three little girls, the eldest
of whom was only a child. It was a pitiful position
for the blind and lonely man, and we cannot wonder
that he sought ere long another helpmate. His home
must have been but a poor and uncomfortable one,
without some one to superintend it and look after
his daughters ; and to this period may be traced the
seeds of those evil and careless dispositions in them of
which he afterwards complained. With something of
the proud spirit of their father, and the pettish coy
nature of their mother,* and without affectionate vigi-
lance to guard them from evil, no wonder if the little
creatures became disorderly and impatient in their
manners, and grew up into some hardness of nature.
After about two or three years of widowhood, Milton
married for his second wife, Catherine, daughter of a
Captain Woodcock of Hackney. The marriage was
performed by civil contract on the 12th of Xovember
1656, by Sir John Dethicke, "knight and alderman,"
* Milton's complaint of his wife's muteness and reserve was probably
in a great degree the mere coyness of her youthful simplicity in the view
of his superior powers.
234 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
after the publication of their agreement and intention
on three market-days. There is nothing known of the
relatives of this lady, although Mr Keightley has haz-
arded a conjecture that, on this occasion also, Milton
married " out of his own tribe " (as he says). He pre-
sumes that the lady was a Eoyalist or Presbyterian.
In any case the marriage was a happy one, only too
swiftly broken. This second wife died in childbed
about fifteen months after their union. In a beautiful
sonnet, bearing the date of 1658, the poet has com-
memorated her virtues and his affection for her : —
" Methought 1 saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave.
Her face was veiled ; yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her pei'son shined
So clear, as in no face with more delight :
But 0 ! as to embrace me she inclined,
I waked ; she fled ; and day brought back my night."
Notwithstanding his blindness, Milton remained as
Latin secretary throughout the Protectorate. He re-
ceived an assistant, and a colleague * was also joined
with him, who, latterly, was his friend Andrew Marvell.
He still continued himself to prepare all the higlier
and more important State papers, many of which, in
the shape of letters written in the name of the Pro-
tector, are published along with his other works.
It will not appear unnatural to those who under-
stand the men and the circumstances, that he should
have willingly acquiesced in the Protectorate, and
* An order in counci], dated April 17, 1655, reduces Milton's salary
from £288 to £150, to be paid to him during his life; from which circum-
stance some have inferred that this was virtually a rctirini] pension : but he
continued in active service long after this ; and in 1689 there is an order
for the payment of John Milton and Andrew Marvell, both at the rate of
£200 a-year.
MILTON. 239
rendered its great master liis services. Milton was
a republican ; and to the very last, when all may be
said to have lost faith in a free Commonwealth, he
wrote in the same high and confident admiration of
it as ever. But while he was a republican, he was
no democrat. So far from this, his nature and all his
sympathies were intensely aristocratical. It was not
for the government of the people, the " credulous and
hapless herd begotten to servility," but for the govern-
ment of the wisest, that he cared. This is the express
ground on which he defends, in his Dcfcnsio Secunda,
the authority of Cromwell. " In the state of desolation,"
he says, " to which the country was reduced, you, O
Cromwell, alone remained to conduct the government
and serve the country. We all willingly yield the
palm of sovereignty to your unrivalled ability and
virtue, except the few among us who, either ambitious
of honours which they have not the capacity to sustain,
or who envy those which are conferred on one more
worthy than themselves, or else who do not know that
nothing in the world is more ijlcasing to God, more
agreeable to reason, more jiolitically just, or more gene-
rally uscfid, than that the supreme power should he vested
in the best and wisest of men" * Like Cromwell him-
self, the author of the Defence despised incompetency
and hated disorder. The incapacity and factiousness
of the Eump sufficiently justified, to his mind, their
violent dismissal ; and, if we may judge from the w^ay
in which he alludes to the circumstance, even Colonel
Pride's purge secured his sympathy and approval.
With such sentiments, it can be no matter of
surprise that he not only accepted the Protectorate,
but cordially approved of it. It did not appear to
* p. 945.
236 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
him ill tlie liglit of a usurpation, but only as a neces-
sary means of consolidating the liberty which England
had achieved for herself. He cherished no fear of
Cromwell tyrannically betraying the interests of the
country ; he admired the heroic grandeur of his char-
acter, and he gladly and proudly served under him.
To what extent these two great minds came into
closer contact we have no means of knowing. There
was, of course, much in Milton of which Cromwell
could have no appreciation ; and, absorbed in the
urgent duties of practical government, the Protector
may have scarcely penetrated beneath the surface of
the mighty genius that worked beside him in the
Council oftice at Whitehall, and gave itself with such
willing capacity to do his service. He may have
been to Cromwell, after all, but his blind secretary,
possessing a rare and serviceable gift of expression
in the Latin tongue ; a man of marvellous and ready
powers, but little more. We would fain cherisli a
different idea, and believe that two such minds could
not come together as they did wuthout reciprocal ad-
miration, and insight into each other's deeper spirit ;
and that, as Milton saw and appreciated the great
qualities of the only man lit to govern England in
those years,* so Cromwell discerned in his blind com-
panion the traces of a genius, the mightiest that then
swayed the realm of thought and of imagination. There
were moments certainly, as in the preparation of the
* Sonnet to the Lord General Cromwell, May 16, 1652.
" Cromwell, our chief of men, who, through a cloud.
Not of war only, but detractions rude,
Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,
To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed.
And on the neck of crowned fortune proud
Hast reared God's trophies, and His works pursued."
MILTON. 231?
great state papers in vindication of the war with Spain,
and the writing of the letters to the King of France in
behalf of the persecuted Piedmontese, when they must
have come very near to each other in intellectual
sympathy, and their hearts flashed high together in
proud resentment over religious wrongs. The great
Puritan warrior and poet, in high converse respecting
the rights of free thought and the necessity of vindi-
cating the Protestant cause and the name of England
abroad as well as at home — s];irred into indignant pity
— with the one, overflowing in commanding remon-
strance ; with the other, rising into a sublime appeal
to the great Avenger — suggests one of the most noble
and touching pictures which even that heroic age
presents.
After Cromwell's death Milton still acted in his
official capacity under the brief Protectorate of Eicli--
ard, and then in the name of the restored Parliament
that succeeded on his abdication. His last official
document bears the date of May 15, 1659. His pen was
unusually busy during the troubled months that fol-
lowed. His apprehensions in regard to religious liberty
and the purity of the Church were all renewed, and he
addressed Parliament at length on both subjects. The
first he handled in a Treatise of civil liberty in ecclesias-
tical causes, showing that it is not lawftd for any i^rson
on earth to compel in matters of religion. The latter he
set forth in Considerations touching the likeliest means
to remove hirelings out of the Church, ivherein is also
discourse of tithes, church fees, and church revenues, and
whether any maintenance of ministers can he settled hy
law.
The first of these treatises is in his best style, en-
larged and profound in argument, and animated and
238 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
nervous in expression, with almost none of tliat minute
and reiterated appeal to scriptural and historical re-
ferences which so often breaks the force and clear
coherence of his reasoning. It is an exposition of the
fundamental principles of Protestantism, and the doc-
trine of toleration which arises out of them. He Avas
always happy and powerful in this field of argument.
The comprehensive and expressive sweep of many of
his statements have the same pregnant bearing as
in the Areopagitica upon the general state and rela-
tions of religious and speculative opinion. There is
nothing, he shows, that many professed Protestants
less understand, than the ground on which they stand,
and which alone gives any consistency to their posi-
tion. There is nothing they are so slow to yield to
one another as perfect liberty of opinion — nothing
even that they seem more afraid to claim for them-
selves ; while yet there is, and can be, no other basis
of Protestantism than this perfect freedom whereby
every man judges the truth for himself in the light
of Scripture. That " no man, no synod, no session
of men, though called the Church, can judge de-
finitely the sense of Scripture, is well known to be a
general maxim of the Protestant religion, from which
it follows plainly, that he who holds in religion that
belief or these opinions which to his conscience and
actual understanding appears with most evidence or
probability in the Scriptures, though to others he
seem erroneous, can no more be justly censured for
a heretic than his censurers, who do but the same
thing themselves which they censure him for doing."
And in reference to this principle he points out
how far more reprehensible is the conduct of the
persecuting Protestant than the Papist. " The Papist
MILTON. 239
exacts one belief as to the Chiircli due above Scrip-
ture, . . , but the forcing Protestant, although he
deny such belief to any Church whatsoever, yet takes
it to himself and his teachers, of far less authority
than to be called the Church, and above Scripture
believed."
In this treatise, and that on True Religion, Here-
sie, Schism, and Toleration, published only the year
before his death, we have our author's mature ^iews
on the subject of toleration. His point of view is as
comprehensive in the earlier as in the latter treatise.
The principles announced in botii cover every latitude
of doctrinal opinion — Popery and idolatry excepted ;
the latter as being " against all Scripture, and there-
fore a true heresy, or rather an impiety, wherein a
right conscience can have nought to do ; " the former
as being not so much a religion as a usurped political
authority, " a Eoman principality rather endeavouring
to keep up his old universal dominion under a new
name and mere shadow of a Catliolic religion." Mil-
ton, in short, had worked out tlie intellectual prin-
ciples of toleration thoroughly, but under the pressure
of traditionary modes of thought, which were of the
very religious framework of Puritanism (his view of
idolatry, for example), he did not see his way to the
universal practical application of these principles.
The course of opinion has helped to work the subject
free from the obtruding elements of dogma which re-
fused to concede to a conscientious idolatry its free
rights of sufferance ; but it cannot be said that it has
yet disembarrassed it of all the difficulties connected
with the political assumptions of Popery.
In the second treatise whose title we have given,
Milton's Protestantism may be said to reach its fur-
240 ENGLISH PURITANISiM AND ITS LEADERS.
tliest point of development. Its aim is substantially
to vindicate the separation of Church and State. The
question of tithes is discussed as quite inapplicable
to the Christian ministry, and the necessity of any
legal maintenance for this ministry is strongly repudi-
ated. Eecorapense is to be given to ministers of the
Gospel " not by civil law and freehold, but by the
benevolence and free gratitude of such as receive
them."
Besides these treatises devoted to the subject of
religion, the political state of affairs engaged his
interest and occupied his pen at this time. He
penned in October (1659) A letter to a friend con-
cerning the ruptures of the Commonwealth, which was
not, however, published at the time. A public pam-
phlet followed On the ready and easy way to establish
a Free Commonwealth, and the excelle7ice thereof, com-
pared with the ineonvcnienccs and chetnges of readmit-
ting kingship into this nation. In this publication
Milton drew a strong picture of the evils of a return
to the royal authority. He painted the difference be-
tween a commonwealth freely served by its greatest
men " at their own cost and charge, who live soberly
in the families, walk the streets as other men, may be
spoken to freely, familiarly, friendly, without adora-
tion ; and a kingdom whose king must be adored like
a demi-god, with a dissolute and haughty court about
him, of vast expense and luxury, masks and revels,
to the debauchery of the prime gentry." He recom-
mended that the supreme power should be vested
in a perpetual grand Council of ablest men, chosen
by the people, to consult of affairs for the public
good. The model of the Council that seems to have
run in his mind was the Jewish Sanhedrim ; and,
MILTON". 241
after all the dreams and new models of government
that had occupied men's minds, there was nothing
new or sj^ecially practicable in that which he pro-
posed. Men's minds were wearied of change and un-
settlement ; there were but few with the same proud
heroic convictions as himself; the course of affairs,
with General Monk at their head, was drifting ra-
pidly into the old channel of royalty, with scarcely
less fanatical enthusiasm than it had drifted away
from it, and the republican pamphlet in the circum-
stances made no impression. He addressed a brief
summary of it to Monk in a letter intended for his
own special perusal ; but the old and waiy soldier had
made up his mind, and Milton was left to mourn in
darkness and silence the infatuation of his country-
men. A sermon by a Dr Griffiths on the "Fear of
God and the King," in which the miserable trash so
common in previous and after reigns as to the inviol-
able right of kings, was openly vented, yet once more
called our watchful patriot into the field. He pub-
lished notes upon this sermon ; and with this closed
what we may call his public and political career.
The main thought that occurs in review of this
period of Milton's life, is the extent to which he repre-
sented, in his single person, the intellectual strength
and aspirations of triumphant Puritanism. If Milton
could be conceived removed from the scene during the
decade that followed the death of Charles, the great
'■^iterpreter of all that was most characteristic and
powerful in English political and speculative thought
would be gone. It is very true that there were whole
sections of the national feeling during this time that
he did not, and could not, represent. From what re-
242 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
mained of the old Eoyalism and Anglicanism, and no
less from the strong though subdued Presbyterianism
which had so long contended side by side with the
freer Protestantism which itself had evoked, he was
entirely separated. He did not try to understand
either, and was incapable of doing them justice. But
this did not disqualify — nay, it only qualified him the
more to stand forth as the prominent defender of that
bolder spirit of political and religious thought, which
was the natural development of the great movement
of the century. The sj^ecial dogmas, both constitu-
tional and biblical, in which the movement began,
could not, in the nature of things, bind the national
mind as it rapidly expanded under its new conscious-
ness of freedom. The current of opinion soon broke
into a wider and freer course. Puritanism enlarged
its conceptions, till it left behind it its Eoyalist timidi-
ties, and, in a great measure, its doctrinal narrowness.
It was this higher and more thorough spirit — this
progressive phase of the Eevolution, — its extreme
right, so to speak, — that really governed England in
those years ; and Milton was its intellectual leader.
His great genius was wholly given, to the service, the
exposition, and defence of its political, social, and re-
ligious claims. While Cromwell was in his Govern-
ment its practical expression, he was in his writings
its argumentative expositor ; and as the one stands
alone in his capacity, so does the other. As Crom-
well had no political, so Milton had no intellectual,
compeer. Together they represent the highest advance
to which the great revolutionary wave of the century
surged before it fell back again for a time into the
muddy and confused channel of the Eestoration.
Because Milton and Cromwell outlived, in many
MILTON. 243
respects, tlie original narrowness of Puritanism, it
would be absurd to say that they are not to be
classed as Puritans. Puritanism was not merely a
mode of theological opinion, such as we discern in
the Westminster Confession and the prevailing theo-
logical Kterature of the time. It was a phase of
national life and feeling, which, wliile resting on a
religious foundation, extended itself to every aspect
of Anglo-Saxon thought and society. Its distinguish-
ing and comprehensive principle was the adaptation
of State and Church to a divine model. In all things
it sought to realise a divine ideal. But it was not so
much the unity and consistency of a particular ideal,
as the aim towards some ideal, and the dogmatic, posi-
tive, and formal manner in which this aim was carried
out, that characterised it. The creed of Puritanism,
therefore, both theological and ecclesiastical, might
and did vary. Cromwell, Milton, and others soon
pushed through the narrow bonds of Presbyterian ism
into a broader religious atmosphere. And Milton
especially — gifted with that innate intuition of the
divine which has a constant tendency to ascend above
forms, and seek its ideal ever higher in the region
of the contemplative — not merely abandoned Presby-
teriauism, but rose, in many respects, above the dog-
matic basis to which it was so strongly welded. His
was not a mind like that of Owen, or even Baxter, to
rest set in any mould of dogmatic opinion prepared for
it, or to busy itself with merely working out this mould
into more complete and profound expressions. He
was himself a vates — a divine seer — and no mere theo-
logical mechanic.
Yet while Milton rose above the hardening forms of
Puritanism, its spirit never left him. He never out-
244 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
lived the dream of moulding botli the Church and
society around him into an authoritative model of the
divine. In all his works he is aiming at this. He is
seekina; to brino- down heaven to earth in some arbi-
trary and definite shape. If there is anything more
than anotlier that marks his mode of thought, it is
this lofty theorising, which applies its o^vn generalisa-
tions with a confident hand to all the circumstances
of life, and, holding forth its own conceptions, seeks
everywhere in history and Scripture for arguments to
support them, and to crush out of sight everything
opposed to them. Even when he is least Puritan,
in the hmited doctrinal sense of the word — as in his
writings on divorce — lie is eminently Puritan in spirit.
Whatever may be his special opinions, he is every-
•where a dogmatic idealist — not merely an interpreter
and learner of the divine — but one who, believing him-
self confidently to be in possession of it, does not hesi-
tate to carry out his ideas into action, and square life
according to them. The varying and expansive charac-
ter of his opinions does not in the least affect the
unity of his spirit.
The epithet or the quality of Eclectic, therefore,
which some have applied to jNIilton, is more mislead-
ing than in any sense characteristic. " He was not a
Puritan," Macaulay says ; " he was not a free-thinker ;
he was not a Eoyalist. In his character the noblest
qualities of every party were combined in harmonious
union." So far as this is true at all, it is true merely of
the superficial qualities of his nature. If by a Puritan
he meant one who wore long hair, who disliked music,
who despised poetry, then Milton certainly was no
Puritan. But it is only to a very material fancy that
such qualities could be supposed to constitute Puritan-
MILTON. 245
ism. It would never for a moment have struck our
poet himself that his love of music, or of poetry, or
even his wearing his hair long, separated him in any
degree from his own party, or assimilated him to that
of the Court. With the latter party he had not a single
element of intellectual affinity. He and the Eoyalist
writers of the time stood at entirely opposite poles.
The whole circle of his ideas, political, poetical, and
theological, was absolutely opposed to theirs. He would
have abhorred Hobbes, as he despised and ridiculed
Charles I. His intellect was as little eclectic as any
great intellect can be. It sought nurture at every
source of cultivation, and fed itself on the most varied
literary repasts ; but after all it remained unchanged,
if not uncoloured, by any admixtures. He Avas direct,
dogmatic, and aspiring, but never broad, genial, or dra-
matic. " His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart."
He outshone all others. But while elevated ui his
grandeur, he was not comprehensive in his spirit.
Even when he soared farthest beyond the confines of
contemporary opinion, he carried with him the intense,
concentrated, and Hebraic temper which characterised
it. Puritanism was in many, perhaps in most, a very
limited, while, at the same time, a very confident and
unyielding, x^hase of thought. In ]\Iilton it loses its
limits, but it retains all its confidence and stubborn-
ness. It soars, but it does not widen ; and even in its
highest flights it remains as ever essentially unsym-
pathetic, scornful, and affirmative. It lays down the
law" and the commandments. It is positive, legislative,
and authoritative. This is the temper of our author
everyAvhere, and tliis was the Puritanical temper in its
innermost expression.
As to Milton's prose writings themselves, regarded
246 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
from an intellectual and literary point of view, it is
difficult to give any summary estimate of tliem, — tliey
are so great, and yet so unsatisfactory. Putting out
of view his two Latin treatises in defence of the people
of England — which in the very fact that they were
written in Latin may be said to have prepared their
own oblivion after the first excitement and admiration
caused by them were past — it is doubtful whether the
neglect into which his English prose works have fallen
is not to a large degree merited. Controversial in
their aim and structure,* they are not generally fair,
consistent, and impressive as arguments. No one
would tliink of consulting either Milton's anti-pre-
latical or divorce writings, still less perhaps his writings
against Charles L, for a candid statement of the diffi-
culties involved in the questions which they discuss.
It was not the tendency of his mind to see difficulties,
or to admit objections. He goes right at his point in
the ideal-dogmatic manner characteristic of him, see-
ing only his own side, and disdaining or putting out
of sight any other ; or where he is sometimes brought
face to face with a hard fact, or an embarrassing text,
cutting them asunder, and scornfully casting them
away.-f- They are consequently incomplete and inef-
fective ; their polemics weary while they fail to con-
vince ; and the reader who seeks in them for the
weapons of argumentative victory, or for the solution
of his own perplexities, leaves them dissatisfied and
unconvinced. For after all there is nothing stronger
* This, of course, has no apjjlication to his History of England, and
other historical and educational compilations. But these works, what-
ever merits they have, do not furnish any grounds for an independent
estimate of Milton as a prose writer.
f As the way, for example, in which he deals with our Lord's state-
ment about adultery as the only valid plea of divorce.
MILTON. 247
in argument, and nothing wliicli serves the purpose
better in the end, than candour — the honest wish to
deal fairly and rise above obstinate prejudices. It may
not secure a ready triumph, nor a party triumph, but
it secures the only triumi^h that the reason acknow-
ledges, when the passions of the hour have died down,
and the heats of violent zeal are gone out. It is
this quality more than anything else — this lofty and
rational fairness— that makes Hooker, as a reasoner,
so satisfactory. The "Books of Ecclesiastical Polity,"
in virtue of their calm, candid, and elevated philoso-
phical spirit, form almost the single text-book of the
controversy that retains a Living and instructive in-
terest.
But unsatisfactory as Milton's prose writings are in
their controversial features, whenever he passes, as he
often does, from historical or scriptural polemic to
general discussion, intellectual reference, or personal
description, he is luminous, impressive, and power-
ful. His large and earnest genius moves at ease in
this higher atmosphere. His thoughts have scope to
expand to their natural dimensions, and his style rises
into corresponding majesty. Wliile the mere details
of controversy fret and irritate him, degrade his
ideas, and lumber his style, wherever he gets above
them under the sway of moral passion or the buoy-
ancy of his proud intellect, his prose no less than his
poetry becomes very grand. There are many passages
in which his austere enthusiasm, swelling into lyrical
rapture, breaks forth into wondrous symphonies of
language. In these fits of eloquence, neither Hooker
nor Bacon equal him. The one is more simple and
expressive in detail; the other rolls long sentences
into a sweeter and more sustained melody; but neither
248 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
rises into such voluminous and crashing bursts of
music. And these passages of apostrophic grandeur
and elevation, where the controversialist sinks out of
sight, and the seer or poet alone appears, are more nu-
merous in his earlier and anti-prelatical writings than
might be imagined. They suggest strongly the idea of
one who is naturally above the work he has in hand
— whose native element is far above the din of con-
troversy, and the temporary strife to which he lends
himself. In this manner of writing, he was inferior
to himself, and had the use but of his " left hand," as
he said. The " genial power of nature " led Mm to
quite another task ; and it is this genial power, con-
stantly becoming restive and breaking forth into prose-
poetry wherever the subject will permit, that gives
their highest interest to these writings. The slightest
catch or allusion is enough to set him off; as when,
in the First Book of Rcformatioii, the mention of the
fathers and the martyrs of the English Church leads
him to exclaim: "And herewithal I invoke the immor-
tal Deity, Eevealer, and Judge of Secrets, that wher-
ever I have in this book plainly and roundly (though
worthily and truly) laid open the faults and blemishes
of fathers, martyrs, and Christian emperors, or have
otherwise inveighed against error and superstition Avith
vehement expressions, I have done it neither out of
malice, nor list to speak evil, nor any vainglory, but of
mere necessity to vindicate the spotless truth from an
ignominious bondage," &c. Again, in his Animadver-
sions iqwn the Remonstrants' Defence,'^ so dry and plain
a subject as the alleged novelty of the Puritanical re-
* Macaiilay has noticed the elevated strain into which Milton rises in
this treatise, when it might have been least expected, and whose general
structure is not i^articularly interesting or forcible.
mLTON. 249
forms makes him break fortli into a rapture of reply,
in which he invokes the " One-begotten Light and per-
fect Image of the Father." " Thou," he says, " hast
discovered the plots and frustrated the hopes of all the
wicked in the land, and put to shame the persecutors
of Thy Church ; Thou hast made our false prophets to
be found a lie in the sight of all the people, and
chased them, with sudden confusion and amazement,
before the redoubled brightness of Thy descending
cloud, that now covers Thy tabernacle. Who is there
that cannot trace Thee now in Thy beamy walk through
the midst of Thy sanctuary, amidst those golden can-
dlesticks which have long suffered a dimness amongst
us through the violence of those that seized them, and
were more taken with the mention of their gold than
of their starry light ? "
The conclusion to the Second. Booh of Reformation
forms one of the most heightened and prolonged of
these lyrical apostrophes, into which Milton so natu-
rally bursts. It is, moreover, peculiarly characteristic
in its combination of strength and rugged invective,
with the most charming sweetness of tone, as in the
following single sentence, which is all for which we
can afford space. Addressing God, and inveighing in
most denunciatory terms against the bishops who as
" wild boars have broke into Thy vineyard, and left the
print of their polluting hoofs on the souls of Thy ser-
vants," he continues : " 0 let them not bring about
their damned designs that stand now at the entrance
of the bottomless pit, expecting the watchword to open
and let out those dreadful locusts and scorpions, to
reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of infernal darkness,
where we shall never more see the sun of Thy truth
again, never hope for the cheerful dawn, never more
250 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
hear the "bird of morning sing." How exquisitely the
fine sense of the poet here seduces the ahnost raving
polemic, and under its iniluence the tone of blustering
and rude invective sinks into a softened cadence, and
the fresh music' of the dawn !
Altogether, Milton's prose writings, while they can
never acquire, as they can never be said to have pos-
sessed, popularity (in the ordinary sense), must always
remain a favourite resource to the student of our poli-
tical and literary history, and among the highest en-
joyments of every lover of ennobling thought, and of
combined magnificence and beauty of expression. Like
many other massive but irregular compositions, the
more they are studied, and the more familiar we be-
come vnth them, the more will we see and appre-
ciate their real poM'-er and interest. All that is coarse,
weak, and temporary, falls away as we gaze upon their
grand outlines ; while the broad basement and aspiring
pillar, graced by the most rich and curious touches of
an exquisite art, comes forth in bold and finished im-
pressiveness.
Milton's life, after the Eestoration, sinks away into
quietness and obscurity. We have some characteristic
facts from one or two gossipy admirers,* who were
proud to recall their recollections of him. We know
it chiefly by its splendid fruits in Paradise Lost and
Paradise Regained.
He continued to the end to hope in a Eepublic.
Shut up in his own world of political idealism, he
calmly sketched in his letter to Monk the " brief de-
lineation of a free Commonwealth, " while the whole
machinery of the Eevolution was tumbling to pieces
* EUwood the Quaker, and (at second hand) Richardson the painter.
MILTON. 251-
around him, and the Eestoration was already impend-
ing. After the re-establishment of the monarchy, =
he withdrew into seclusion, and was glad if he could
only escape notice. His writings against the late
King were seized, and, along with Goodwin's Oh~
structors of Justice, burned by the hands of the com-
mon hangman. He was himself in custody after the
Act of Indemity was passed, on what ground is not
known ; but it does not appear that any serious de-
signs were entertained against him. There is a story
that he owed his safety to the poet Davenant, who
requited in this manner Milton's interposition on his
behalf, when taken captive during the civil war and
condemned to die. The tale is so pleasing, as John-
son says, that we could wish to believe it ; but there
seems no satisfactory evidence that Milton's life was
ever really in danger. Whatever may have been
Charles's faults, vindictiveness was not one of them.
He had too little seriousness even to cherish resent-
ment for his father's death ; he left the punishment
of the regicides to Parliament ; and there were men
such as Marvell, Morrice, and others, there, who were
good friends of Milton, and who would do what they
could to throw the shield of their protection over the
blind patriot.
During the fourteen years which he outlived the
return of royalty, he resided chiefly in London ; and
latterly, for the final nine years of his life, in a house
in Artillery Walk, leading into Bunhill-fields. " This
was his last stage in the world," as Phillips says. It
is with this residence that Pdchardson's reminiscences
connect him. Here he was remembered sitting in " a
small chamber hung with rusty green, in an elbow-
chair, and dressed neatly in black ; pale, but not
252 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
cadaverous, his hands and fingers gouty, and with
chalk stones. . . . He used also to sit in a grey
coarse cloth coat at the door of this house, in warm,
sunny weather, to enjoy the fresh air, and so, as well
as in his room, received the visits of people of dis-
tinguished parts as well as quality." He had many
illustrious visitors, especially strangers of distinction.
" He was much more admired abroad," Aubrey says,
" than at home ; " although there were those at home
too, such as Dryden, who, after the publication of
Paradise Lost, learned to look with reverent and ad-
miring eyes towards the great recluse.
Two years before his retirement to this house
(1662-3), he married a third time, an event which
proved happy in its issues for himself, but which
served to reveal a very unpleasant picture of strife
and misery in his home. At the time of his marriage
his eldest daughter, who was lame and "helpless,"
was about seventeen, and his youngest about eleven
years of age. From whatever cause, they had grown
up without fondness or respect for their blind father.
We have his own statement that they were " unkind
and undutiful." His brother reported that he had
heard him complain that " they were careless of him
being blind, and made nothing of deserting him ; "
that they combined together with the maid to cheat
him in his marketings, and that "they made away
with some of his books, and would have sold the rest
to the dunghill woman." * These statements were eli-
cited in evidence in the trial respecting his will that
followed his death. They suggest a very miserable
* Mary, the second one, is even reported to have said, when she heard
of his intended marriage, that " that was no news to hear of his wedding,
but if she could hear of his death, that was something."
MILTON. 253
state of things ; but the shadow of the picture "by no
means falls exclusively on the daughters, when all
the facts are regarded. The wilful and hoyden blood
of their mother, her dislike of retirement, and indif-
ference to literature, they appear to have shared ; but,
let it be remembered how young they were. Most
fathers do not look for any special amount of gravity
and filial consideration and housekeeping accomplish-
ments at such an age as even the eldest had reached.
It was in Milton's nature to be exacting ; not sparing
himself, he had no idea of sparing others. It was his
nature, moreover, not to allow for the position of others.
With all his nobleness, he was deficient in forbearance
of spirit and sympathy Avith weakness. He could no
more understand the natural frivolities of girlhood than
he could understand the deeply-stirred affections of
royalism after the execution of the King.
Milton, accordingly, mismanaged his daughters as
he had mismanaged their mother, although with more
excuse in the one case, from the helplessness indviced
by his blindness. He required the two youngest to
assist him in his studies, in a manner in which some
daughters might be proud to assist their father, but
which no mere sense of duty — nothing but a strong love
and a congenial taste — could sustain day by day. He
made them his amanuenses and readers. He expected
them to be always ready to write to his dictation, and
to read to him, not merely in English, but in languages
of which they themselves did not understand the
meaning.* This was part of their training ; and there
are few who will not be prepared to sympathise with
* This is the account of Phillips, so far corroborated by Aubrey. De-
borah's own account to Dr Wai-d, of Gresham College, substantially
agrees with it.
254 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
them in its irksomeness. Subjected to the rule of a
step-mother, whose temper towards them at least ap-
pears to have been harsh, although Milton says she
was " very kind and careful of him " * — it is little
wonder that they found their father's home uncom-
fortable, and that one after anotlier they should have
left it. Deborah, the youngest, and who was most of
a favourite with her father, was the last to leave ; but
she, too, at length quarrelled with Mrs Milton, and
3-bout the year 1669 all the three daughters had gone,
according to Phillips, " to learn some curious or in-
genious sorts of manufacture that are proper for women
to learn, particularly embroidery in gold and silver."
'Two of them subsequently married — the eldest and
youngest — the latter of whom survived to a good old
age, and was reverently sought out and assisted by
Addison.
Milton's third wife was of good family, being the
daughter of Mr Eandle MinshuU, of Wistaston, near
JSTantwich, in Cheshire. The marriage was one of con-
venience, arranged for him by his friend Dr Paget, who
* Phillips, who strongly takes the side of the children in the domestic
quarrel, says with brief vigour, that his uncle's third wife "persecuted
his children in his lifetime, and cheated them at his death." Consider-
ing how difficult it is in contemporary life to ascertain the truth in such
matters, it is no wonder that we should meet with discrepancy in the
long-past story of Milton's family disagreements. Aubi-ey says of this
wife, that " she was a genteel person, of a peaceful and agreeable
humour ; " and Aubrey knew her personally. Milton's own account of
her kindness to him is given in the text. On the other hand, Richard-
son calls her a termcujant, and represents her as worldly, and rather
grasping. Such varieties in the domestic portraiture of the same per-
son, seen from different points of view, are not uncommon. The truth
probably is, that as a wife, Elizabeth Milton was affectionate and use-
ful, a good and managing housekeeijcr, with the somewhat imperious
temper which is apt to distinguish that character, and the chief effects
pf which naturally fell upon her husband's disorderly and hoyden
daughters.
MILTON. 255
was connected with tlie lady ; and the arrangement,
whatever its disadvantages to the daughters, proved a
blessing to himself. " Betty," as he called her, appears
to have well understood the austere and high nature
with which she had to deal, and to have smoothed,
with a clever fitness and tender hand, his declining
years.
The same solicitous medical friend (Dr Paget) who
had provided Milton with a wife, shortly after found
him also a companion, more suited to be his reader,
and more proud of being so, than any of his daughters
had been. This was a young Quaker of the name of
Ellwood, who stands in interesting association with
these last years of the Poet, and to whom, particularly,
we are indebted for certain well-known information as
to the connection between Paradise Lost and Pa.radise
Regained. Ellwood felt an honourable pride in this
association, and has recorded certain characteristic
traits of the great man. " I was admitted to him,
not as a servant, which at that time he needed not,
but only to have the liberty of coming to his house at
certain hours when I could, and to read to him what
books he should appoint me, which was all the favour
I desired. ... I went every day in the afternoon,
except on the first day of the week, and, sitting by
him in his dining-room, read to him such books, in the
Latin tongue, as he pleased to hear me read. At my
first sitting to read to him, observing that I used the
English pronunciation, he told me, if I would have the
benefit of the Latin tongue, not only to read and to
understand Latin authors, but to converse with foreign-
ers, either abroad or at home, I must learn the foreign
pronunciation. To this I consenting, he instructed
me how to sound the vowels. This change of pro-
256 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
nunciation proved a new difficulty to me ; but Lahor
omnia vincit im^jrobus, and so did I, which made the
reading more acceptable to my master. He, on the
other hand, perceiving with what earnest desire I pur-
sued learning, gave me not only all the encouragement
but all the help he could ; for having a curious ear,
he understood by my tone when I understood what I
read, and when I did not ; and accordingly would stop
me, examine me, and open the most difficult passages
to me."
In these simple and garrulous traits, we can read
an interesting and pleasing picture of the great scholar
and his young Quaker friend and pupil. After all his
]3olitical and ecclesiastical excitements, it had come
to this quiet retirement, and the perusal of his old
favourite authors. The country which he had faith-
fully served might be ungrateful, but he certainly
bore no loss ; not only so, but, with the magnanimity
of a great spirit, he requited his country's neglect by a
nobler and far more lasting service than any he had
yet rendered.
The first years of his enforced retirement saw the
preparation of his great epic. Paradise Lost was cer-
tainly complete in the spring of 1667 — probably a
year before this ; * but there is abundant evidence
that he had been working at it long before. Accord-
ing to Aubrey's statement, he had commenced it as
early as 1658, when there may have seemed to him,
under the settled rule of Cromwell, the prospect of a
period of literary ease and culture.f So early an
* Ell wood says that he had seen the MS. in the beginning of 1606,
while visiting Milton at Chalfont, Buckinghamshire.
■f It desen'es to be noticed that literature did seem rising into renewed
prosperity under the rule of Cromwell, who showed in this, as in other
MILTON. 257
origin, liowever, is not sufficiently substantiated, and
is in itself unlikely. If his mind were then busy with
the subject, it was probably in the earlier and cruder
shapes in which it is presented in the Cambridge
MSS. These MSS. show two plans of a sacred mys-
tery or drama, on the subject of the Fall of Man, in
the second and more perfect of which " Lucifer appears
in an aspect exactly corresponding to that in which
he is jpresented in Paradise Lost, bemoaning himself,
and seeking revenge upon man." * It is interesting
to think of him working at his great conception in
this tentative manner ; but there is every reason to
believe that it was not till after the " evil days and
evil tongues" of the Eestoration had forced him into
privacy and solitude, and driven his mind back upon
the lofty plans and ideas of his earlier years, that
he really entered upon the composition of Paradise
Lost. We can easily conceive with what enlarging
joy his mind, freed from the political cares that had
so long encumbered it, would revert to those half-
forgotten plans, and with what pride he would once
more take to himself, in his " darkness" and sheltered
solitude, the " garland and singing robes" so long
laid aside. The old thought to do something in
his country's literature such as " the greatest and
choicest wits of Athens, Eome, and Modern Italy, and
those Hebrews of old, did for their country" — " some-
thing so written to after-times as they should not wil-
matters, a wide toleration, and extended his patronage to royalist as
well as anti-royalist writers. Cowley and Hobhes returned from exile.
Butler " meditated, in the house of one of Cromwell's oflQcers, his gro-
tesque Satires against the Sectaries ; " and Davenant, on his liberation
from prison, received permission to open a theatre.— See Guizot's
CroriuoeU, ii. 167.
* Keightlet. p. 400.
R
258 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
lingly let it die " — would then return upon liim with
a zest and consciousness of strength all the greater
that he had felt how " inferior he was to himself "
in that "cool element of prose" — "a mortal thing,
among many readers of no empyreal conceit" — to
which he had been so long confined. His higher
genius had never ceased to stir him to some higher
and more enduring work ; and now, when all the
public objects for which he had cared and laboured
were overthrown — when his ideal schemes of ecclesi-
astical and civil liberty were shattered and destroyed
— with what eagerness would he recall his vanished
dreams of poetry, and from the very depths of his pa-
triotic despair make to himself a higher and brighter
vision of contemplation ! The idealising grandeur
which in great spirits often comes from weariness and
disgust at practical life — the reaction of a mind like
his — thrown back upon its original foundations, and
congenial intuition of the " bright countenance of
Truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies "
— such seems the natural explanation of the sublime
conception which now built itself up under his ima-
ginative touch.
In contemplating Milton's resumption of the Muse,
it is particularly interesting to notice the change of
spirit that had come over him in the long interval of
controversy through which he had passed. The cha-
racteristics of his early poetic genius survive in his
later poems in all their richness and strength, but
they are mellowed as with a riper flavour ; they are
more mature, more lofty, and, if not more instinct with
emotion, yet of a grander and more encompassing
power of feeling. The sweetness lingers, but it is of
a grave and more earnest cast ; the old sensitiveness
MILTON. 259
to natural beauty has retired behind a new swell and
fulness of moral passion, such as no other poet but
Dante has ever reached, or even approached. It is this
increase of reflective and moral interest which marks
the peculiarity of his later poetic powers. The reader
sees at once what a world of hard exjDerience the poet
has passed through, and how his nature has at once
deepened and expanded under it. It has struck its
roots far more firmly into the enduring rock of the
Divine ; it has reared its natural majesty far more
nearly into the very light and glory of Heaven. A cer-
tain gaiety of heart and nimbleness of fancy has gone
from him; the inspiration of U Allegro, II Penscroso,
and the Comus is there, but chastened and checkered,
— lying like patches of charming spring sunshine on
the broadened current of his genius — while he has ga-
thered in the course of twenty years of toilsome and
agitating disputes a strength of intellectual fibre, a com-
pass of intellectual treasure, a reach of spiritual con-
ception, and an intensity of spiritual imagination, which
amount almost to a new faculty of poetic accomplish-
ment. The traces of harmony and of varied culture
in his early poems, the fulness of historical allusion
and local memory, and descriptive minuteness and fide-
lity that creeps out in them, are now everywhere mani-
fest in an accumulated degree ; while the religious
and speculative interest which was in them subsidiary,
has taken the foreground, and sublimed by its exalting
and consecrating power, all his other gifts to a higher
and more potent capacity. Many a poetic genius
would have sunk and gone out under such an ex-
perience as that through which Milton had passed.
It would have been weighed down, if nothiog more,
by the very accumulation of its intellectual resources.
260. ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADEES.
It was tlie peculiarity and greatness of liis genius to
become only more buoyant under all its load of
wealth — to rise witli it on more triumphant wings,
and to harmonise and mould the whole so as to give
more splendour, variety, compass, and majesty to his
poetic conceptions.
Any mere literary criticism of Milton's later poems
is beside our purpose. It concerns us, however, to
point out the influence of the puritanical spirit and
mode of thought upon the great productions which
mark this period of his life. In reference to Para-
disc Lost, in particular, in which all his powers are
seen in their most concentrated vigour and harmony,
this becomes a somewhat interesting task. The more
attentively the whole argumentative plan of this poem
is studied, and the more the lines of religious thought
wliich underlie it, and bind it into a grand epical
unity, are brought into view, the more will there be
recognised in them the puritanical impress — the seal
of a genius moulded after the great type of Genevan
thought, however richly diversified and enlarged.
It was and remains an essential characteristic of this
thought to conceive of the struggle between good and
evil in the world in the light of a great scheme defi-
nitely concluded in the Divine Mind, and finding its
highest warrant in the wise appointment of the Divine
Will. The mysterious facts of sin and redemption are
not merely recognised as they exist and operate in the
world, or as many conceive them to be revealed in
Scripture, but they are further apprehended and re-
cognised as parts of an ideal economy or system of
decrees which explains them, and with a view to winch
they were divinely preordered. Divine truths are not
merely accepted by Calvinism in their obvious import.
MILTON. 261
but they are reasoned backwards into a great specu-
lative conception, embracing them all, and giving to
each its appropriate meaning and explanation in regard
to the rest. It is the aim of all Christian thought,
more or less, no doubt, to do the same thing : thought
cannot become active on the facts of revelation with-
out trying to unite them into some ideal scheme or argu-
ment. But it was the ambition of Puritan theology to
have done this more completely than any other in its
great system of divine decrees. The mysteries of the
world lay unravelled in all their outline before the
spiritual vision of the Puritan, and his mind acquired
a dread familiarity with the divine in its supposed
workings and ends. The author of Paradise Lost is
everywhere such a Puritan. The conception of the
divine decrees lies at the basis of his poem. The
whole plot is wrought' out from it. The fall of the
rebel angels, the creation and fall of man, are merely
successive exigencies by which the divine mind carries
out its preconceived plans. There is no mystery be-
hind, lurking shadowy in the abyss of the Godhead.
All is prearranged and clear, setting out from a definite
decree, thus disclosed to the angelic intelligences : —
*' Hear, all ye angels, progeny of light,
Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers, —
Hear my decree, which, unrevoked, shall stand :
This day have I begot whom I declare
My only Son.
To him shall bow
AU knees in heaven, and shall confess him Lord."
From this absolute act the whole argument of the
epic enfolds itself Beginning in an arbitrary and au-
thoritative assertion of will, it advances along the same
line of conception. Satan erects his will in opposition to
262 ENGLISH rUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
the divine decree. Assertion calls forth assertion, and
the conflict of good and evil proceeds as a conflict of
naked power on both sides. Device in Satan is met
by device in heaven ; the craft of hell seems to triumph
for a while, and man falls ; but it is only by prear-
rangement to a greater rising.
It is not merely the general scheme of thought here
presented which is Puritan, but, above all, the mode
of the thought. There is no attempt to invest the
primal decree of the Godhead, out of which the
whole action of the poem may be said to spring, with
rational interest. Notwithstanding tlie often quoted
verses in the opening of the poem, the mind is not
made to rest on any moral vindication — the assertion
of eternal justice, truth, or righteousness — but on the
bare contemplation of power, the promulgation of an
absolute decree, and the maintenance of that decree in
the face of the antagonism which its very absoluteness
provokes —
' ' New laws from Him who reigns, new minds may raise
In lis who serve,"
argues Satan. It is the mere command to submit,
' ' Law and edict upon ns, who, without law.
Err not,"
that calls forth the spirit of rebellion. The contest is
a contest of will against will, and the ideas of right
and wrong only spring out of it — they are not pri-
marily obtruded upon the reader. This sufficiently
shows the origin of the conception. This naked pro-
trusion of will, irrespective of moral intent, as in itself
an adequate spring and explanation of action in the
Divine, is eminently characteristic of the school of
theological thought to which Milton belonged.
The perception of this enables us to analyse an
MJLTON. 263
impression, to which there are few who do not own
in reading the poem — admiration of the character of
Satan. Irresistibly we feel our thoughts raised as we
contemplate this wonderful creation ; and a certain
vastness of heroic interest gathers around the scarred
and mighty form of the " Archangel ruined"—
" Above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent."
It is not sympathy, it is not mere admiration, but it
is the blended feeling of pathos, wonder, and awe, that
surrounds a once mighty foe overthrown and laid in
the dust. All readers confess to some share of this
feeling. The degree in which it is raised is the great
triumph of the poem as a work of art. The interest
radiates from Satan as the central figure, without
which, in its peculiar combinations of fallen grandeur,
all would be comparatively tame. In immediate con-
nection with this figure the poet reaches his loftiest
sublimities ; and as we recede from it in the later
books, his power does not hold us in such thrall.
JSTow the main secret of this strong interest in Mil-
ton's Satan is the peculiar character of the conflict in
which he is represented as engaged. He falls before a
higher power ; he is crushed down to hell ; but, from
the prominence that is given to mere force in the con-
test, our moral sympathies, so far from being directly
outraged by his rebellious spirit, are greatly enlisted
on his side. It was necessary, for the purposes of his
poem, that Milton should take up this view ; the poem
otherwise would have been no epic, and possessed no
source of excitement. But it may be seriously ques-
tioned how far tliis triumph of art is a triumph of
truth. Tlie Puritan spirit here helped the poet; it
fed the mighty creation which had seized his ima-
264 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
gination ; but, as this spirit disappears, it is felt that
the limitations which have given an epical intensity
and grandeur to the poetic conception, have narrowed
and emptied of its fulness the spiritual thought.
One of the most remarkable results of Milton's poem
is the manner in which it has added to the Protestant
conceptions of the spiritual world. The antecedent
drama of conflict in heaven, the fall of the rebel
angels, theii' resentment in hell, and plot against man
— are all amplifications beyond the scope, yet in the
very spirit, of the Puritan theology with which his
mind was imbued. He not only ascends to the postu-
late of this theology — the absolute decree of the
Divine — and weaves it into his whole plan ; but he
fills up the ante-human space which precedes the real-
isation of the divine plans on earth by an aiTay of
spiritual machinery, fitting, with a smgular unity and
effect, into these plans, and explaining them. Between
the decree which sets up the throne of the Messiah,
and the fall of man, which necessitates the interposi-
tion of Messiah's power, he introduces a series of
events transcending Eevelation, yet so admirably de-
veloping its hints, and so completely harmonising
with the general scheme of its thought, that there
are many minds that have lost all sense of distinction
between what is merely imaginative and what is dog-
matic in the representation. The epical agencies and
scenery of the early books have not merely coloured
the religious imagination, but they have, so to speak,
become a part of the creed of Protestantism. They
have replaced in it, in higher and more beautiful forms,
the medieval beliefs of celestial and anti-celestial hier-
archies, and given to them such a vividness of imj^res-
sion and force of theological truthfulness, that with
MILTON". 2G5
many they seem to be only natural and colierent parts
of the Christian system. Nothing can more show how
entirely congenial Milton was with the prevailing type
of Christian thought in his day, than this fact of his
having not only taken up its scheme into his poem,
and organised the whole from it, but of his having,
moreover, stamped his own imaginative enrichments
of it upon the minds of succeeding generations as
really parts of the same great outline of thought.
The same thing is shown by many special charac-
teristics of the poem ; the daring boldness, for example,
with which long trains of argument are put into the
mouth of God, and of the Son of God, and the marked
forensic or juridical structure of some of these argu-
ments. No parts of the poem are more wonderful, or
show more marvellously the elastic sublimity of the
author's genius. With what a rare skill he triumphs
over masses of unpoetic material, and fuses them into
living idea and sentiment ! But he also sometimes
greatly fails ; and the bald structure of the argumen-
tative dialogue or monologue reveals the hardness of
the theologian rather than the plastic ease and richness
of the poet.
In Paradise Regained this baldness of theological
structure is more conspicuous. There is a compara-
tive tunidity and want of grasp in the conceptions
of the poet ; while the moral spirit is more narrow
and stern — as especially in the manner in which he
speaks of heathen wisdom in the Fourtli Book. The
didactic character of the poem, its want of action, and
the argumentative character of the conflict carried on
between the Saviour and the tempter — all serve to
bring into stronger relief, or, at least, into a more
complete view, the formal peculiarities of Milton's
266 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
thought. Paradise Lost is a far grander illustration
of this thought ; but Paradise Regained is, as a whole,
a more select pattern of it. The one soars in its
sublime action and wealth of imaginative idea far be-
yond all mere schemes of argument ; the other scarcely
travels beyond a very definite line of intellectual con-
ception. The dogma of his great epic, however essen-
tial to its structure, and however significant of his own
spirit and creed, is, after all, a mere skeleton on which
the majestic form of the poem is hung. The dogmatic
import of Paradise Regained fills up the whole out-
line, and makes the whole story of the poem.
Tlie origin of Paradise Regained is related by Ell wood
as follows. During the time of the plague, in 1665,
Milton quitted Loudon, and took up his abode at Chal-
font, in Buckinghamshire, where his Quaker friend,
with that untiring and cheering kindliness which dis-
tinguished him, had provided for him, as he says, a
"pretty box" about a mile from his own residence.
On Ellwood paying him a visit here " to welcome him
to the country," Milton called for a manuscript, which
he gave to him, with a request that he should take it
home, and, after carefully reading it, return it with his
judgment thereupon. This was the manuscript of
Paradise Lost. On returning it, wdth a " due acknow-
ledgment of the favour he had done me in communi-
cating it to me," continues the Quaker, " he asked me
how I liked it, and what I thought of it, which I
modestly and freely told him ; and after some further
discourse about it, I pleasantly said to him, ' Thou hast
said much here of Paradise lost — but what hast thou
to say of Paradise regained?' "
Supposing Milton to have commenced the composi-
tion of Paradise Regained soon after this conversation
MILTON. . 267
witli Ellwood in the summer of 1GG5, it was probably
finished in the course of the following year. It was
not published, however, till six years later, in 1671,
when it appeared, along with Samson Agonistes, in
one volume.
This latter poem, classical as it is in form, is the
most Puritan of all Milton's poems in sternness of spirit
and concentrated and rigid outline. There is less of
the "genial power of nature" in it— less of that soft
brightening spirit of beauty which relieves the graver
cast of his thought elsewhere, and touches his higher
moods with a happy tenderness and exquisitely pleas-
ing grace. The Hebraic temper is diffused and un-
bending throughout, not only mournful, but harsh,
breathing the vengeance of the theocratic hero — fallen,
despairing, and impatient. It is difficult not to believe
that Milton has allowed to escape in this poem some-
thing of the proud bitterness of feeling which, beneath
all the quiet surface of his later years, he yet cherished,
as he remembered the great cause with which he had
been identified, the heroes who had adorned it, and the
miserable overthrow in which all had sunk and gone
to ruin. Even his own domestic misfortune casts its
deep and painful shadow over the picture which he
draws ; and in the vehement objurgations of his deceived
hero we catch the very strain of the author of the Doc-
trine and Discipline of Divorce. * Save for this poem,
we could somehow suppose Milton to have been a
happier man than he really appears to have been in
those later years of his life.
Besides his great poems, this period is generally
credited with the preparation of his treatise on " Chris-
* There is almost an identity at times in the language, as between the
famous passage in the Doctrine, etc., regarding "' an uncomplying discord
268 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
tian Doctrine." The history of this treatise is now well
known. It was discovered in 1823 in the State-Paper
Office by Mr Lemon, and edited and translated by the
Eev. Mr Summer, now Bishop of Winchester. It had
been deposited in the State-Paper Office nnder the
following circumstances : Milton, apparently designing
that it should be published abroad, had intrusted it
before his death to a certain Daniel Skinner, of Trmity
College, Cambridge, supposed to be a nephew of his
friend Cyriac Skinner. This gentleman carried it to
Amsterdam, and there offered it to Elzevir for publica-
tion; but after examining the manuscript, the Dutch
publisher declined the undertaking. The English
Government, in the mean time, had heard of the ex-
istence of the manuscript, and, apprehensive that it
might contain writing " mischievous to the Church
or State," was desirous of securing possession of it.
With this view, Dr Barrow, Master of Trinity, lATote
to Skinner, warning him of the danger he was incur-
ring in his attempts to have it published. Skinner,
instigated by this warning, again obtained possession
of the manuscript, and transferred it to the custody
of the Secretary of State, by whom it was deposited
in the office, where Mr Lemon found it undisturbed
in 182.3.
A question has been raised as to the right relation
of this treatise to Milton's theological views. Does it
of nature," and a "bondage now inevitable," where one looked for
"sweet and gladsome society," and the following lines : —
" Whate'er it be to wisest men and best,
Seeming at first all heavenly under virgin soil —
Soft, modest, meek, demure :
Once found, the contrary she proves, a thorn
Intestine, far within defensive arms
A cleaving mischief— in his way to virtue,
Adverse and tui-bulent,"
MILTON. 269
really represent his later convictions ? Tliis has gene-
rally been assumed as beyond question ; but an argu-
ment has been lately raised on the subject. One thing
must be admitted, that it was certainly commenced
at an early period. "VVlien he first engaged in the
education of his nephew, on his return from Italy,
Phillips tells us that it was a part of his system on
the Sundays to dictate portions of a " tractate which
he thought fit to collect from the ablest of divines
who had written of that subject, Amesius and Wol-
lebius," &c. The Treatise on Christian Doctrine is
found exactly to answer to this description. Large
portions of it are not only taken from these two
Dutch theologians, but the whole arrangement of the
work, not only under two main divisions, entitled the
Knoioledge of Ood and the Worship of God, but in its
special chapters, is found to be borrowed from them.
At whatever time of his life, therefore, the Treatise
may have been completed, it was evidently begun early
in the second or controversial stage of his career. It
has been contended, very much on this presumption,
that it really represents liis early and not his later
theological opinions — that its Arianism was the faith
of his comparative youth, from which he departed as
his Christian experience deepened, and his Christian
knowledge expanded.* There is some plausibility in
this conjecture, but it is certainly not borne out by
any conclusive facts — while, as a theory, it rests on a
mistaken view of Milton's mind and character. That
* See B'Mlotheca Sacra, July 1859 and January 1860, where this view-
is defended at great length, and with a very elaborate examination of all
the facts bearing upon the point. It does not appear to me, however,
after the most candid attention to his argument, that the writer has
made out his case.
270 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADEES.
Milton should be an Arian is supposed to be incom-
patible with his Puritan spirit and the tenor of the
theological systems which moulded his thought in so
evident a manner. But this is to judge Milton in far
too arbitrary and summary a manner. He was a
Puritan, but he was also more than a Puritan. He
had studied the Genevan and Dutch systems of theo-
logy until his habit of thought had become quite
attempered to them, and he carried their most abstract
theories into the composition of his great poems ; but
he was also far more than a student of any theological
theories. He w^as a thinker on his own behalf: he
had a natural largeness and independence of mind,
combined with the strongest confidence in his own
judgment, and something like contempt for mere
Catholic tradition, whether in doctrine or church dis-
cipline. Such a mind was exactly the one to venture
on new paths of theological deduction, and, amid the
contemplative quietness of his later years, to elaborate
views, which seemed to him to arise from his own free
sense of inquiry. It is absurd, as we have already said,
to identify Puritanism with any uniform series of doc-
trinal conclusions. It represents a mode of theological
thought, rather than a definite sum of theological re-
sults ; and Milton's Arianism, so far from being at
variance with this mode of thought, might be argued
to be only a consistent issue of it. The spirit of
logical analysis which insists upon definition at every
point, and carries its formal argumentativeness into
the highest mysteries of spiritual truth, would find
nothing uncongenial in Milton's speculations on the
nature of the Godhead.
It appears to us, upon the whole, beyond doubt, that
the Treatise of Christian Doctrine represents Milton's
MILTON. 271
most mature theological opinions. Its Arianism need
not puzzle any student of Paradise Lost. Its latitu-
dinarian tone in regard to polygamy and the obliga-
tion of the Sabbath, need not even surprise any one
who rightly understands his mind and character.
Unpuritan as the sentiments on these subjects are
— more characteristically so than his Arianism —
they are merely the natural development of that
spirit of free-thinking wliich, in Milton as in some
others, struggled all along with the dogmatism of
their time. When, in the very heat of his controver-
sial career, he showed, both in his Areopagitica and
his divorce writings, the strength of this tendency,
and his willingness to enter into conflict with the pre-
vailing orthodoxy; and in the retirement of his later
years, and the quiet evolution of his own opinions, he
was not likely to yield less to the impulses of his own
bold inquiry and his ready and confident opiniona-
tiveness. There may seem, on a superficial view,
considerable inconsistency between such parts of the
Christian Doctrine, and especially between the libe-
I'al rationalising spirit which distinguishes them, and
the narrow 'Hebraic spirit, for example, of Samson
Agonistes; but such an inconsistency, even if it was
more marked than it is, is only the difference between
the poet yielding himself up to the mood of long-che-
rished feelings, and the intellectualist following out
the thread of his own reasoned convictions. Apparent
inconsistencies of this kind may be found in all great
minds ; and in a mind like Milton's, it is only the
natural expression of its largeness and diversity, at
once poetic and concrete, and speculative and theo-
retic. It seems exactly to suit the character of Mil-
ton, to conceive of him in his later years embalming
272 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS,
in liis poetry tlie spirit of tlie great movement in
wliicli he liaci been engaged, and yet freely criticising
and holding himself above its sjDecial dogmatic con-
clusions.
The three years during which Milton survived the
publication of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistcs
are marked by various publications. In the year
1672 he published a scholastic work,* which had pro-
bably been prepared for some time. During the next
year he republished his poems, English and Latin,
with some additions, and also his Tractate on Educa-
tion. His treatise on True Religion, Heresy, Schism,
Toleration, &c., already noticed in connection with his
views on the latter subject, belongs to the same year.
In the succeeding and last year of his life he was still
busy publishing. He collected together his Latin
Epistolce Familiares, the letters which he had written
to friends from 1625 to 1666, and also his Prolusiones
Oratorim which he had dehvered at Cambridge, and
gave them to the world. He appears to have care-
fully treasured all his literary efforts, not merely his
original and independent works, but liis scholastic
and other compilations. Mr Keightley has remarked
on his fondness for compilation. Besides his treatise
on Christian Doctrine, he left behind him a short ac-
count of Eussia or Moscovia, founded on the narratives
of persons who had visited the country.
During these years the tenor of Milton's life was of
an even peacefulness. Study, music, and quiet recrea-
tion filled up his days. The notices of his manners
and appearance that have been preserved by Aubrey
and others, chiefly refer to this time. He was an
early riser: in his youth he used to sit up late, but
* Ards Logicce pknior Institutio ad Rami Methodum Concinnata.
MILTON. 273
lie had long since changed this practice, and he now
retired to bed early, and rose in the morning at four
in summer, and five in winter. Sometimes he
would lie in bed awake, and have some one to read
to him, or to write to his dictation. After he rose,
a chapter of the Hebrew Bible was read to him,
and the whole of the early part of the day employed
in reading or writing — "the writing," Aubrey says,
"was as usual as the reading." He used to dictate
sitting at ease in his chair, with his leg thrown over
the arm of it. He dined at one o'clock, and took exer-
cise for an hour, often also in a chair, in which he
used to swing himself. His dinner was frugal, and he
drank little but water. But he had a quiet relish for
the comforts of the table, and commended his wife for
her attention to his tastes. There is a pleasing, and
yet a painful sense of dependence in the remark attri-
buted to him. " God have mercy, Betty. I see that
thou wilt perform according to thy promise, in pro-
viding me such dishes as I think fit, whilst I live ; and
when I die, thou knowest that I have left thee all."
His poor daughters ! They had no doubt, among
their other neglects, kept their father's table but
poorly supplied, and he had not forgotten their negli-
gence. The afternoon was devoted to music. He
played on the organ or bass viol ; and either sang him-
self or made his wife sing. His wife had a good voice,
he said, but no ear. Eenewed study and conversation
with his friends brought the evening to a close, when,
after a light supper, a pipe of tobacco, and a glass of
water, he retired to rest about nine o'clock.
His conversation, according to Aubrey, was "ex-
tremely pleasant," with a vein of satire. His daugh-
ter Deborah also says that he was " delightful com-
s
274 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
pany, the life of conversation, and that on account of
a flow of subject and an unaffected cheerfulness and
civility." His powers of composition varied, he has
liimself told us, with the season. " His views never
happily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the
vernal, and whatever he attempted (at other times)
was never to his satisfaction, though he courted his
fancy never so much."
His beauty of person in youth and manhood has
been already remarked. He was evidently not un-
conscious of it, as may be gathered from the man-
ner in which he expresses himself in his Defensio
Secunda in reply to the vulgar abuse of the anony-
mous libeller who attacked him. " I do not believe,"
he says, " that I was ever noted for deformity by
any one who ever saw me ; but the praise of beauty
I am not anxious to obtain. My stature, certainly,
is not tall, but it rather approaches the middle than
the diminutive." The florid and delicate complexion
of his youth he retained till advanced in life, so that
he appeared to be ten years younger than he was ;
and the smoothness of his skin was not in the least
affected by the "wrinkles of age." His eyes Avere
grey, and never lost their hue, blind as he became.
His hair was light brown, or auburn ; it remained in
profusion to the last, and he wore it parted evenly on
his forehead, as seen in his portraits. " He "had a
delicate tuneable voice, and pronounced the letter r
very hard" — " a certain sign," Dryden said to Aubrey,
" of a satirical wit." " His deportment was affable,
and his gait erect and manly, bespeaking courage and
undauntcdness."
It has been noticed that Milton attended no clmrch,
and belonged to no particular communion of Chris-
MILTON. 275-
tians. His blindness was probably to some extent tlie
explanation of this, although it requires but a slight
knowledge of his mind and Avritings to understand
what little importance he himself would attach to such
things. His religious consciousness, in its very strength,
did not easily conform to external modes of worship.
" His having no prayers in his family " is a somewhat
unmeaning accusation, seeing that he began every
morning Avitli the reading of the Scriptures, and that
his wife and he, in his later years, were all the family.
Of his last days we know little. He suffered some
time from gout ; yet in the end of the autumn of
1674 he appears to have been in fair health and
cheerfulness. He is described by one of the witnesses
in the suit regarding his will, as dining in his kitchen
on a day of October, along with his wife, when he
" talked and discussed sensibly and well, and was very
merry, and seemed in good health of body." On Sun-
day, the 8th of the following month, he expired, so
painlessly and quietly, that those around were uncon-
scious of the moment of his departure. His remains
were laid beside those of his father, in the Church of
St Giles, Cripplegate.
Our view of Milton's character and influence has
been fully indicated in the course of our sketch. But
a few touches may be added to sum up our esti-
mate. Of the two great types of human character,
the broad, humane, and sympathetic, and the narrow,
concentrated, and sustained, Milton belongs to the
latter. His greatness awes us more than it delights
us. It is like an isolated, solitary, and majestic
eminence, which we never approach without reve-
rence, but beneath the shadow of which few men
276 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
dwell familiarly. Something similar to what Johnson
said of his great poem, that while we read it, we are
carried along with excited admiration, but when we
have laid it down, we do not willingly recur to it, is
true of his character. While we look on him we see
and admire how lofty, and pure, and true he was; but
his very goodness is not attractive. It wants ease,
freedom, and sweetness, and, above all, breadth and
life of sympathy. It is cold, if not stern, in its severe
harmony and goodness. His goodness is almost more
stoical than Christian in its proud, self-sustained, and
scornful strength.
The pride of conscious power is everywhere conspi-
cuous in him. His very manner carried force with it.
He had an air of "courage and undauntedness," as
Wood said. A hard adversary with his pen, he was
also well exercised in the use of the small-sword, and
in his youth was quite a match, he tells us, for any
one, though much stronger than himself. The same
" honest haughtiness and self-esteem " mark him as a
scholar, as a controversialist, as a poet. From the
lonely height of his own lordly genius and virtue he
looked down on others. His genius was a prized
possession from his youth, raising him (he felt) above
his feUows, and consecrating him to a high mission.
His virtue never trembled before temptation ; it flung
aside all ordinary seductions as easily as the strong
rock drives back the idle summer waves that play
around it. From such an imperial height of nature,
he contemplated society around him with a somewhat
disdainful interest, and sought to rectify its disorders,
civil and ecclesiastical, with a high and resentful hand.
He felt that he was born to rule, and so he was ; but
in the world of ideas rather than in the world of
MILTON. 277
reality. He wanted tact and skill, and appreciation of
the thoughts and feelings of others, and of any range
of ideas beyond his own to enable him to be a prac-
tical reformer. He remains a great theorist. And the
same sublime ideality that is the chief attribute of
his genius, is the prominent feature of his character.
Contemplating him from first to last as a student at
Cambridge, as a visitor in the academies of Italy, as
the enemy of bishops, and the secretary of Cromwell,
as the blind old poet of Bunhill-fields, we are struck
by his soaring grandeur, and the elevation which he
reaches above his contemporaries. " His natural port,"
as Johnson says, "is gigantic loftiness." In an age
of moral greatness, where heroic rehgious principle
swayed the lives of public men around him, the char-
acter of Milton is seen to rise majestic in its moral
strength, and his life to be conformed with a rare
consistency to a divine ideal. AH is throughout as,
at the age of twenty-three, he resolved it should be —
"As ever in his great Taskmaster's eye."
The impression he left upon his contemporaries was
plainly of the kind we have described. He could be
cheerful in conversation ; there was a rich liveliness
in some moods of his genius ; but he was mainly of a
grave, lofty, severe spirit. " He had," Eichardson says,
" a o-ravity in his temper, not melancholy, or not, till
the latter part of his life, sour— not morose or iU-
natured ; but a certain severity of mind — a mind not
condescending to little things." These last words are
full of truth. Milton's greatness wanted condescen-
sion ; his goodness was without weakness ; his mag-
nanimity Avithout sweetness. Not only what he
makes Samson say, "AU wickedness is weakness,"
278 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
but the converse he seems to have believed. Had he
been less strong, and less disdainful in his strength, we
could have loved him more and not admired him less.
Had pity mingled with his scorn, and gentleness with
his heroism, he could have presented a more pleasing
if not a more imposing character.
But if there are other characters that more elicit
our affection, there is none in our past history that
more compels our homage. We behold in him at
once the triumph of genius and the unwavering
control of principle. He is the intellectual hero of a
great cause ; he is also the purest and loftiest, if not
the broadest, poetic spirit in our literature. If there is
harshness mingling with his strength, and a certain
narrowness and rigidity in his grandeur, the most
varied tastes and the widest oppositions of opinion
have yet combined to recognise in John Milton one
of the highest impersonations of poetic and moral
greatness of which our race can boast.
III.
BAXTER
BAXTER.
The three great theologians of English Puritanism are
Owen, Howe, and Baxter. They are very distinct in
character and mind, and the first and last were con-
spicuously opposed in various points of principle and
doctrine ; yet together these three names form the
highest representatives of the theological type of
thought and feeling which sprang from, or rather ac-
companied and animated, the Puritanical movement.
They are, if we may use the word in reference to' such
writers, the classics of Puritan theology. In them its
spiritual hfe reached its most elaborate expression, and
took its most characteristic intellectual forms. Their
lives — those of Owen and Baxter especially — were inti-
mately blended with its varying fortunes, not merely
as the leaders of its thought, but as among the most
active of its counsellors, and the ablest of its politi-
cians ; they shared in its triumphs, and directed its
ecclesiastical and educational aims in the interval of
its power ; they mingled in the disasters of its fall, and
bore in their persons the effect of its sufferings. The
Puritan Christianity of later times has always looked
back to them with a peculiar reverence, and united
their names in a community of hallowed respect.
Owen is, of the three, the most perfect example of
282 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADEES,
the Puritan Theologian. The main interest of his life
and all the interest of his writings is theological.
Whatever is most essential and characteristic in Puri-
tan divinity is to be found in his works. Its leadinf^
ideas of covenants, decrees, and federal relations, com-
pose the substance and structure of his thought. The
spiritual world appears to him moulded on a rigid
outline, which is not merely convenient and suggestive,
but which has become to his mind the very constitu-
tion and reality of that world. His reasoniugs run in
great lines, or mass in blocks of system, which fill up
for him the whole sphere of truth, and leave nothing
behind. The profoundest mysteries are measured and
weighed in the cool balances of his logic ; the most
awful secrets are handled as if mere pleas in debate.
Gifted with a logical faculty, both keen and compre-
hensive, he cuts through the deepest questions, and
lays side by side, in order, the most involved and
hardest subtleties. Loving, like all genuine Puritans,
argumentative amplification and detail, proceeding from
a few settled principles, and wholly undisturbed by
any of those deeper questionings which draw the mind
back upon first principles in their universal relations,
he is, of all theologians, scarcely excepting Calvin
himself, the most consistent, definite, and exhaustive,
on his own assumptions. A bolder and more unflinch-
ing theorist never trod the way of those sublime revela-
tions that "slope through darkness up to God." He
is a Calvinist beyond Calvin. He explains, and de-
fines, and sums up, in his theological arithmetic, what
even the great Genevan did not venture to do. The
atonement is with him not merely a " sacrifice to satisfy
divine justice," but a " full and valuable compensation
made to the justice of God, for all the sins of all those
BAXTER. 283
for wliom Christ made satisfaction." It is only the
Puritan divines of America, such as Edwards and
Hopkins, who have approached or rivalled Owen in
analytical boldness, and far-reaching, undeviatiug, and
comprehending theological deduction.
Along with scholastic earnestness, profound devo-
tion to scri]3tural studies, and a life of eminent spiri-
tuality, we find in Owen a like combination of practi-
cal sense and faculty for business as in his prototype
Calvin. He had the same administrative power, the
same coolness and patience of purpose, with a far higher
courtesy and tolerance of feeling. This latter feature
of Owen's character deserves particularly to be noticed.
Hard and dogmatic in intellect, he was genial and
gentle in his temper. Eesolute in his own views, and
ever ready to contend for them with his unresting pen,
he had none of the meanness of bigotry which refuses
to It^nour those who differ from him. He protected
Pockock in his Hebrew professorship from the vulgar
interference of the Parliamentary Triers, and left the
Prelatists unmolested who assembled opposite his own
door in Oxford to worship according to the Prayer-
book.
His government of the University of Oxford as vice-
chancellor was a striking proof both of his administra-
tive ability and his equable and happy disposition.
Looking at all the difficulties that surrounded him,
it may be considered a masterpiece of policy. His
learning and talents commanded respect ; his firmness
and kindness won him authority, and enabled him to
preserve peace amidst the distracting elements. No
other Puritan divine probably could have been in-
trusted with the task, or, if intrusted with it, could
have executed it with the same success.
284 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
It was the felicity of Cromwell to detect tins gift of
government, and turn it to account. Of all the reli-
gious men the Protector had about him, he found none
more useful than Owen. He may have liked others
more, and found in men like Hugh Peters, far infe-
rior in sense and character, points of greater spiritual
affinity; hut, as a statesman, he trusted none so much,
and he had good reason for his trust. The strong con-
victions of the vice-chancellor, his earnest, yet calm
faith, his activity and zeal, and yet his moderation
and sense, made him one of the most conspicuous
representatives, and at the same time one of the most
powerful supporters of the Protectoral cause.
Wliile Owen was the great dogmatist of the Puritan
theological movement, Howe was its contemplative
idealist. Possessing a far less acute and discrimina-
ting mind, he excelled in grandeur of imagination and
depth of feeling. His conceptions rise into a freer
independence of logical forms, and a loftier harmony
of moral speculation. This majestic and luminous
elevation, and a certain tenderness and freshness of
spirit, make him more congenial to the modern stu-
dent than Owen, or even than Baxter. The latter is
more popular, and his directness and force are more
fitted to impress the common reader; but Howe far
more frequently soars into the sphere of contempla-
tive reason, and fills the mind with the imagery of
thought. Among so many men of logic and of action
he was the Christian philosopher. His spirit cer-
tainly more nearly approaches the philosophic than
that of any other Puritan divine. Puritan formali-
ties cling to him, and the tedium of his style, and
the prolixity of his divisions and subdivisions, never
allow us to forget the age to which he belongs ; but he
BAXTER. 285
also often rises above it, and, by the lustrous fulness
of liis calm intellect, pierces far beyond its intellectual
and spiritual machinery.
The life of Howe, like his writings, was compara-
tively quiet, and removed from the bustle of his times.
He was one of Cromwell's chaplains, it is true ; but
the unworldliness of his character, his unambitious
temper, and the spirituality of his devotions, kept him
apart from the stir that surrounded him. It is a re-
markable evidence of the comparatively undisturbed
repose of his life, and the philosophical cast of his
mind, that amidst the endless controversies in which
his contemporaries w^ere plunged, there is none of his
writings that can be said to be directly polemical.
The Living Tcmjjle is a vindication of Christian tnith,
but not of his own peculiar views of it against any of
the sectaries and heretics of the day. It is more akin
to the apologetical literature of a later time than to
the controversial theology of his own. His vision
ranged, as it were, over the hot fray of combatants
immediately around him, and only descried in Spinoza
an opponent worthy of his pen. Controversy then
only assumed an interest for him when it ascended
into the region of first principles, and left behind the
formal details of ecclesiastical and theological warfare.
It is pleasant to contemplate such a man as Howe
amid the fierce passions and rude and often petty con-
flicts of his age. He could not but bear their dint,
living, as he did, in the very midst of them ; but they
touch him as little as possible. His countenance
shows the traces of a refined and elevated nature, and
of the same largeness and tenderness of soul that
mark his wiitings. It would be difficult to conceive
a more noble, spiritual, or gentle set of features. A
286 ENGLISH rURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
native dignity of manner and character shine in them..
The court of Cromwell may not seem the most fit-
ting nursery of such a nature ; but the presence of one
who, like Howe, combined earnestness with refine-
ment, and all the glow of the Puritan religious feeling
with a chastened taste and a radiancy of imagination,
is enough to show that we are not to judge this court
according to any mere vulgar estimate. It must have
been a pure and high atmosphere in which Howe
moved freely and exercised influence. One who lived
so much above the world, and on whose spirit dwelt so
familiarly the awe and grandeur of the Unseen, Avould
be a constant monitor, both of high principle and duty,
in circumstances sufficient to try the one and seduce
from the other.*
As a preacher, he must have favourably contrasted
with most of the Court chaplains. Others may have
roused more by their vehemence, and delighted by their
highness of doctrine ; but none approached him in dig-
nity, and a certain mixture of sweetness and sublimity
of sentiment, that still captivates the reader. Especi-
ally when he descants of the glories of heaven, and his
large but lazy imagination finds room to expatiate
amidst its felicities, he rises into a pictured eloquence
that is wonderfully impressive amidst all the prolixi-
ties that encumber his style.
Of our three theologians, Baxter was the most ener-
getic, and in some respects the most prominent ; the
* Howe represented the highest religious aspect of Cromwell's court.
It was not all that he wished it to be ; and his sensitive ujjrightness and
faithfulness sometimes brought him into conflict with the ruder and mor^
fervent notions of the Protector. Preaching on one occasion of the fallacy
and pernicious pride apt to be generated by the idea of a particular faith
in prayer, Cromwell was observed to " knit his brows and discover great
uneasiness : " and afterwards the chaplain thought for some time that the
Protector was " cooler in his carriage toward him."
I
BAXTER. 287
most active sharer in tlie events of liis time, and one
of the most zealous representatives of its spirit ; not
merely theologian, but preacher, politician, and nego-
tiator to the very last, when the powers of Puritanism
had again sunk under oppression. He is more com-
prehensive than Owen, and rises more above the
technical bondage of his system; while its spirit
pervades as completely, if not more completely, every
form of his mental life, and shows itself in him in a
greater variety of mental forms. He was more in the
world, more mixed in its conflicts, and more moulded
by them than Howe. He appears, therefore, the most
interesting representative of theological Puritanism :
others bear its doctrinal stamp more definitely and
precisely ; but the very freedom of Baxter's doctrinal
sentiments, which brought him into contact at almost
every point with the religious activity of his age, in-
vests his theological career with a greater attraction,
and makes- it richer in lessons of varied meaniuG: and
importance.*
Richard Baxter was born at the village of Eaton-
Constantine, " a mile from the Wrekin-hill," in Shrop-
shire, on the 12th of November 1G15. His father was
a freeholder in this county, originally of some sub-
stance. His mother's name was Beatrice, and she is
designated as "the daughter of Richard Adeny of
Rowton, a village near High Ercall, the Lord Newport's
seat in the same county." His father had lived a
* Baxter has written his own life — a portly folio, under the name of
ReliquUe Baxteriance. It contains the most ample details of his history,
and will be our chief guide and authority throughout. There is also a
painstaking and creditable work by Mr Orme, entitled The Life and
Times of Richard Baxter, in two volumes, the second of which is devoted
to a review of his works. The same author has a similar work on Owen.
288 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
wild and jovial life in liis youth, and squandered a
great part of his estate in gaming ; but about or short-
ly before the time of his son's birth a great change
passed upon him. He became severely and strictly
religious, and spent much of his time in pious medita-
tion and study. This change had arisen from reflec-
tion, and the " bare reading of the Scriptures in private,
without either preaching or godly company, or any
other book than the Bible." Godly company and reli-
gious instruction, in fact, were not to be had in the
district. The picture which Baxter draws of the clergy
and their assistants is of the most melancholy descrip-
tion. As we read it, and think that the men whom
he describes were not exceptions, but ordinary spe-
cimens of the parochial clergy of King James, the ar-
dour of local Puritanism becomes strongly intelligible.
The people, according to his description, were like their
pastors — rude, ignorant, and irreligious. With such
a clergy, it is remarkable that any moral or spirit-
ual life subsisted among them at all. It is not re-
markable that such as did subsist should have been
called Puritan, and that its adherents, at first not at
all disaffected, should have l3ecome gradually alienated
from a Church that knew not how to respect the sem-
blance of piety.
The incumbent at Eaton Constantino was eighty
years of age. He had never preached, and yet he held
two livings twenty miles apart. He repeated the
prayers by heart ; but, unable to read the lessons from
his failing sight, he got first a " common thresher and
day-labourer," and then a tailor, to perform this duty
for him. At length a kinsman of his own, who had
been a stage-player and a gamester, got ordination,
and assisted him. Tlie clergy of the neighbourhood
BAXTER. 289
were no better. In High Ercall there were " four
readers successively in six years' time — ignorant men,
and two of them immoral in their lives." A neich-
hour's son, "who had been a while at school, turned
minister," and even ventured to distinguish himself
from the others by preaching ; but it was at length
discovered that his orders were forged by the " ingeni-
ous" kinsman of the old incumbent, who had been
a stage-player. " After him, another neighbour's son
took orders, who had been a while an attorney's clerk,
and a common drunkard, and tippled himself into so
great poverty that he had no other way to live ; it was
feared that he and more of them came by their orders
the same way, with the forementioned person." These,
he adds, were the schoolmasters of his youth. They
" read common prayer on Sundays and holy days, and
taught school and tippled on the week days, and whipt
the boys when they were drunk, so that we changed
them very oft." *
The people he has described more particularly in
another work.-f- " The generaUty seemed to mind
nothing seriously but the body and the world : they
went to church, and would answer the parson in re-
sponds, and thence go to dinner, and then to play.
They never prayed in their families ; but some of
them, going to bed, would say over the Creed, and
the Lord's Prayer, and some of them the ' Hail,
Mary.' All the year long, not a serious word of
holy things, or the life to come, that I could hear of,
proceeded from them. They read not the Scripture,
nor any good book, or catechism. Few of them could
read, or had a Bible. They were of two ranks. The
* Life, p. 2.
f The True History of Councils, Enlarged and Defended, pp. 90, 91.
T
290 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADEES.
greater part were good husbands, as tliey called them,
and savoured of notliing but their business, or interest
in the world ; the rest were drunkards : most were
swearers, but not equally. Both sorts seemed utter
strangers to any more of religion than I have named,
and loved not to hear any serious talk of God, or duty,
or sin, or the gospel, or judgment, or the life to come;
but some more hated it than others. — The other sort
were such as had their consciences awakened to some
regard to God and their everlasting state ; and, accord-
ing to the various measures of their understanding, did
speak and live as serious in the Christian faith, and
would much inquire what Avas duty and what was sin,
and how to please God and to make sure of salvation.
They read the Scriptures, and such books as The Prac-
tice of Piety, and Dent's Plain Man's Patliway, and
Dod on the Commandments. They used to pray in
their families and alone — some on the book, and some
without. They would not swear, nor curse, nor take
God's name lightly. They feared all known sin.
They would go to the next parish church to hear a
sermon when they had none at their own ; would read
the Scriptures on the Lord's day, when others were
playing. There were, where I lived, about the num-
ber of two or three families in twenty, and these by
the rest were called Puritans, and derided as hypo-
crites and precisians, who would take on them to be
holy. Yet not one of them ever scrupled conformity
to bishops, liturgy, or ceremonies, and it was godly
conformable ministers that they went from home to
hear."
There is no reason to think that these pictures of
the state of religion in Baxter's youth are overcharged.
We can trace here and there the colouring of the Puri-
BAXTER. 291
tan. The " good husbands, as they were called," who,
although they might have no prayer in their families,
said devoutly the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, or
even the "Hail, Mary," before going to bed, may
have been decently religious people, with some higher
thoughts than he attributes to them. But making all
allowance, the picture is sufficiently gloomy. The com-
mon life, clerical and laic, is of a very coarse and gross
kind ; and men who had been awakened to a sense of
religion Hke Baxter's father must have felt a strong
repulsion to it. He was specially marked out as a
Puritan ; and on Sundays the devotions of the good
man in his family were interrupted by the merrymak-
ing around the Maypole, which was erected beside a
great tree near his door. Here " all the town " col-
lected on Sunday afternoons, after a brief reading of
the common prayer, and danced till dark. Although
the "piper" was one of his own tenants, he "could
not restrain him, nor break the sport. " Baxter honestly
confesses that his heart was frequently with the merry-
makers ; he could have joined them and participated
in their sport, but the reproach of Puritan which they
addressed to his father served to deter him. He re-
flected that his father's quiet study of the Scriptures
must be after all better than their merriment, and
the workings of conscience helped to check the va-
grancies of the heart. The same thoughtfulness con-
vinced him thus early that the name of Puritan was
applied to others as well as his father in mere malice,
for nothing else than " reading Scripture and praying
and talking a few words of the life to come," instead
of joining in the ungodly habits of those around them.
Devout as his father was, in no other sense was he
a Puritan; he never "scrupled common prayer nor
292 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
ceremonies, nor spake against "bishops, nor even so
much as prayed but by a book or form."
Touched as Baxter was by such serious thoughts
from his youth, he was yet far, as he afterwards con-
sidered, from being truly religious. Though his con-
science would trouble him when he did wrong, yet he
was addicted to divers " sins," which he has catalogued
as follows : — 1. Lying, that he might escape correc-
tion; 2. "Excessive gluttonous eating of apples and
pears," to which he attributes the habitual weakness of
stomach which cost him so much trouble and pain
through life ; 3. Eobbery of orchards ; 4. Fondness for
play, and that with covetousness for money ; 5. De-
light in romances, fables, and old tales ; 6. Idle and
foolish chat, and imitation of the scurrilous talk of
other boys ; 7. Pride in his master's commendations of
his youthful learning ; 8. Irreverence towards his pa-
rents. The catalogue is somewhat Puritan in its am-
plification and severity. Boyhood would be scarcely
boyhood without its play, its idleness, its love for
romances, and even its fondness for apples.
Baxter's early education was very interrupted, as
may be supposed, from the character of his tutors.
From six to ten years of age he was under the four
successive curates of the parish — " ignorant men, and
two of them immoral in their lives." These years he
had spent at his grandfather's residence near High
Ercall. On his return to his father's house in his
tenth year, he was placed under a more competent
tutor, who possessed in his library the Greek ISTew Tes-
tament and Augustin's De Civitate. But this teacher
also neglected his trust. During two years he gave
his pupil little or no instruction, and chiefly occu-
pied himself in railing against the Puritans. After
BAXTER. 293
this lie went to the free school at Wroxeter, under the
charge of Mr John Owen, a diligent and respectable
man, who did his duty. Here he had for his school-
fellows the two sons of Sir Eichard Newport, one of
whom became Lord Newport in his day, and Eichard
AUestree, who afterwards became canon of Christ
Church and provost of Eton College, and was distin-
guished for his adherence to the Eoyal cause. He
recounts a significant trait of his boyhood in connec-
tion with his class-fellows : " When my master set
him up into the lower end of the highest form where
I had long been chief, I took it so ill that I talked of
leaving the school, whereupon my master gravely but
very tenderly rebuked my pride, and gave me for my
theme Ne sutor ultra cirjndam."
It was about his fifteenth year that he considers
himself to have awakened to a more clear and lively
sense of religion. With some other boys he had been
robbing " an orchard or two," and being under some
convictions of wrong-doing, he fell in with an old torn
book which a poor day-labourer in the town had lent
to his father. The book was called Bunny's Resolution;
it had originally been wiitten by a Jesuit of the name
of Parsons, but adapted by Bunny to the Puritan taste
and standard.* The volume made a deep impression
upon Baxter's youthful mind. It showed him the
folly and misery of sin, and the inexpressible weight
* This is a singular enough fact — one of those instances which meet
us everywhere of the secret links of connection between religious feeling
in all sects and under the most diverse forms of manifestation. It is
the same sensitive conscience which is touched in Jesuit and Puritan,
the same feeling of guilt calling for the same remedy. The Jesuit
(Parsons) not unnaturally considered Bunny to have used unwarrant-
able liberties with his book, and the latter wrote a pamphlet in his de-
fence. The same book was useful to others among the Nonconformists
as well as 'Baxter.— Owen's Life and Times, p. 6.
294 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
of things eternal ; it excited in liim the fervent desire
of embracing a holy life ; yet it remained doubtful
to him whether his sincere conviction began now, or
before, or after. He had still but too little sense of
the love of God in Christ to the world or himself. The
treatise of the Jesuit dwelt upon this too slightly.
But another volume that came to his hand in the
same accidental manner, disclosed to him the mys-
tery of divine love. A poor pedlar brought to his
father's door, among his other wares, J^ibb's Bruised
Reed, and in this he found what was lacking in the
Resolution. It " opened" the love of God to him, and
gave him " a livelier apprehension of the mystery of
redemption, and how much he was beholden to Jesus
Christ." Various other books, such as Perkins On
Repentance, and the Right Art of Living and Dying
well, and also Culverwell's Treatise of Faith, were
highly useful to him. More than to any others was
he indebted to these silent teachers ; and the fact was
never forgotten by him. He remarks that the use
which God made of books above ministers to the
benefit of his soul, made him exceedingly in love with
good books, so that he amassed as great a treasure of
them as he could.
It is interesting to notice the volumes which in suc-
cessive ages are associated with the conversion of emi-
nent religious men. Every age has its own peculiar
literature of conversion. It needs spiritual stimulants
especially adapted to it. There is something, as it
were, in the atmosphere of religious thought and feel-
ing from time to time that requires to be condensed
and exhibited, so as to bear with a touchmg effect upon
the minds that are growing up under- it. The tones
of Bunny's Resolution, or even Gribb's Brnised Reed,
BAXTER. 295
would now fall but feebly on tlie youthful inquiring
mind ; and even Baxter's own more memorable and
powerful Gall to the Unconverted, whose piercing ear-
nestness has reached so many hearts, may have lost
something of its force and interest to the modern
reader. As the thoughts of men are widened, or at
least altered in religious range, as in everything else,
the argument and appeal fitted to tell most powerfully
must be reflected from some new point, and made to
bear with a fresh life upon changed feelings and views.
When Baxter was ready for higher studies he was
induced, by the persuasion of his teacher, to place him-
self under the tuition of Mr Eichard Wickstead, chap-
lain to the Council at Ludlow, instead of proceeding
directly to the university. The inducement to do this
was that the chaplain was permitted to have a single
pupil, to whom he could give his undivided attention.
But in this case also Baxter was unfortvmate ; the
chaplain paid little or no attention to his pupil. " His
business was to please the great ones, and seek pre-
ferment in the world ; and to that end he found it
necessary sometimes to give the Puritans a flirt, and
call them unlearned, and speak much for learning,
being but a superficial scholar of himself He never
read to me nor used any savoury discourse of godli-
ness ; only he loved me, and allowed me books and
time enough ; so that as I had no considerable helps
from him in my studies, yet I had no considerable
hindrance." He mentions with gratitude that he was
preserved from the temptations that surrounded him in
the town. An acquaintance which he formed with a
young man was of great service to him. They became
fast companions. " We walked together," he says, " we
read together, we prayed together, and when we could
296 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
we lay together ; lie was the greatest help to my seri-
ousness of religion that ever I had before, and was a
daily watchman over my soul ; he was unwearied in
reading all serious practical books of divinity ; he was
the first that ever I heard pray extempore (out of the
pulpit), and that taught me so to pray. And his
charity and liberality were equal to his zeal ; so that
God made him a great means of my good, who had
more knowledge than he, but a colder heart." The
sequel of all this fervency is sad. Baxter's companion
fell, in course of time, into habits of drunkenness and
even of scoffing. The last he heard of him was that he
had become a " fuddler, and reviler of strict men." It
is kindly of Baxter to chronicle at length the good he
got from one who lived so to disgrace his Christian
profession. The reader of Bunyan's life may remem-
ber a somewhat similar incident in his early religious
career.
On his return, after a year and a half, to his father's
house, he found that his old master, Owen, was dying
of consumption ; and, at the desire of Lord Newport,
he undertook the management of his school, " for a
quarter of a year or more." His studies were there-
after continued with Mr Francis Garbet, the " faithful
learned minister at Wroxeter." He read logic with
him, and entered upon a more severe course of intel-
lectual application than he had yet attempted. His
weak health broke down in the attempt. He was
seized with a violent cough and spitting of blood;
his end seemed near at hand ; and anxiety as to his
spiritual condition greatly increased. He mourned
over his "senseless deadness ;" he felt as if he knew
nothing of the " incomparable excellency of holy love
and delight in God ; " and he groaned and prayed for
BAXTER. 297
more " contrition and a broken heart," and most for
" tears and tenderness." This was a time of painful
and sad experience, but also of great spiritual improve-
ment. It made him realise more the power of redeem-
ing love, and destroyed in him the promptings of mere
intellectual and literary ambition, the sin (as he sup-
posed) of his childhood !
From this time his studies were mainly confined to
divinity ; his idea of going to the university was aban-
doned ; and he gave himself to an active and direct
]3reparation for the Christian ministry, to which he
meant to devote himself. The clear direction thus
imparted to his studies gave them importance, and
stimulated his intellectual interest. But he was in
the habit of regretting his loss of a university educa-
tion. He esteemed himself but a poor scholar. " Be-
sides the Latin tongue, and but a mediocrity in Greek
(with an inconsiderable trial at the Hebrew long after),
I had no great skill in languages." " And for the
mathematics," he adds, " I was an utter stranger to
them ; and never could find in my heart to direct any
studies that way." Logic and metaphysics were his
peculiar labour and delight. Both his natural aptitude
and his opportunities turned his main studies in this
direction. By inborn intellectual tact Baxter was a
metaphysician, and the hardest subtleties of the school-
man were to him but natural aliment. He united in
his youth, as in after years, that singular mixture of
practical fervency and intellectual dryness, which we
find in not a few of the schoolmen, and in their Pro-
testant exemplars of the sixteenth century.* " Next to
practical divinity," he says, " no books so suited with
* This is a fact deserving of some psychological study — the intense
and lawless flow of feeling in some of the schoolmen and divines of the
298 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
my disposition as Aquinas, Scotus, Durandus, Ockham,
and their disciples ; because I thought they narrowly
searched after truth, and brought things out of the
darkness of confusion ; for I could never, from my
first studies, endure confusion. Till equivocals were
explained, and definition and distinction led the way, I
had rather hold my tongue than speak ; and was never
more weary of learned men's discourses than when I
heard them long wrangling about unexpounded words
or things, and eagerly disputing before they understood
each other's minds, and vehemently asserting modes
and consequences and adjuncts before they considered
of the Quod sit, the Qiiid sit, or the Quotiqjlex."
He continued for some time in great weakness of
body, and in great anxiety as to his spiritual condition.
His inward tremors reflected his outward debility. His
spiritual fears and hypochondria, though not induced,
were greatly increased by the disorders of his constitu-
tion. Not only now, but throughout life, he was in
ill health. Amid all his labours he bore a weakened
and diseased frame ; it lasted long, but it never ceased
to trouble him ; and in his writings everywhere we
may trace something of the restlessness and morbid
colouring of the Invalid.
About his eighteenth year, his views of life under-
went a temporary diversion. Persuaded by his old
tutor, Mr Wickstead of Ludlow, to lay aside his pre-
seventeenth century, combined with a logic, not merely hard, but arid
and barren in its hardness. Among the latter, an example occurs in
Samuel Rutherford, who, in his Latin theological polemics, and in his
famous letters, shows this singular conjunction of mental qualities —
logical aridity and sentimental fluidity. Polemics more hard and tech-
nical than those of Rutherford (as in his Disputatio Scholastica de Div'uia
Provldeiilia, &c. ) not even the seventeenth century has bequeathed to us
— letters kindling with a more intense and- even tmhealthy fervour are
scarcely to be found in the records of mysticism.
BAXTER. 299
paration for the ministry, he went to London " to get
acquaintance at Court, and get some office, as being the
only rising way." He says tliat he himself consented
reluctantly to this .step ; he had no great confidence
in his tutor's judgment, who had done his part but ill
towards him ; but his parents entered heartily into the
proposal, and to please them he agreed. Accordingly,
he went to town, and stayed at Whitehall with Sir
Henry Herbert, then " Master of the Eevels," about a
month. It is a strange conjunction, Baxter and the
Master of the Eevels ! He does not explain the con-
junction, or by what chance his friend selected such
an abode for him. If it was meant to give him a
taste for Court life, it had, as might be expected,
the very opposite effect. He was disgusted with
what he saw. He felt quickly that he had " enough
of the Court." " When I saw a stage play instead
of a sermon on the Lord's-day in the afternoon, and
saw what course was then in fashion, and heard little
preaching but what was, as to one part, against the
Puritans, I was glad to be gone. At the same time
it pleased God that my mother fell sick, and desired
my return ; and so I resolved to bid farewell to those
kind of employments and expectations."
On his return home, Baxter found his mother seri-
ously ill, and in the following May (1634?) she died.*
He describes the severity of the snow storm on his
way home, and throughout the winter. His horse
stumbled with him on his journey, and he was nearly
crushed under the wheels of an approaching waggon.
The home-bound youth, the cheerless season, and the
* His father married a second time " a woman of great sincerity in
the fear of God." The connection appears to have been a happy one for
Baxter, who speaks of his stepmother in terms of high commendation.
300 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
dying mother, make a sadly impressive picture. The
storm began about Christmas-day, and lasted till
Easter, tlie snow lying, in some places, " many yards
deep ;" many who went abroad in it perished. " Shut
up in the great snow" through all the dreary winter,
he M^as the witness of his mother's piteous sufferings
till death released her in the spring.
He now approached manhood, but his health had
not strengthened. From the age of twenty-one till
near twenty-three, his debility continued so extreme
that he did not expect to live. Under this experience
of suffering, he became more impressed than ever by
the interests of religion, and the folly of those who
neglect it ; and the desire to enter into the Christian
ministry (should his life be spared) grew stronger than
before. He so felt the unspeakable greatness of the
soul's salvation, that he thought if men only heard
of it as they ought, they could not live careless and
ungodly lives ; and " he was so foolish as to think that
he himself had so much to say of such convincing
evidence for the truth, that men could scarcely be able
to withstand it." This was the genuine instinct of the
Preacher. The triumphant faith that he would move
others by what so deeply moved himself, bespoke in
Baxter thus early the true sj^ring of all pulpit elo-
quence. It is pleasant to think of his nursing, amidst
aU his weakness, and when he seemed near to die, the
impulse which was to give its highest distinction and
energy to his life.
It was natural that in his circumstances he should
give special attention to the controversy then agitating
the Church of England. The presence of this contro-
versy has been seen more or less in every turn of his
boyhood, in relation to his father, and the villagers
BAXTER. 301
amongst whom lie lived — his teachers, and his brief
visit to Court. His father, deeply religious as he
was, and called a Puritan by the rioting villagers, be-
cause he would not countenance their Sunday sports,
was yet a Conformist. He never " scrupled common
prayer nor ceremonies, nor s^^ake against bishops."
Baxter had grown up with the same feelings and habits
of worship. He "joined with the common prayer
with as hearty a fervency as afterwards he did with
other prayers." Not only so, but as far as he was able
at this time to examine the subject for himself, and
consider the fair grounds of argument on either side,
he clearly inclined to the side of the Conformists. It
appeared to him that their cause was " very justifiable,
and the reasoning of the Nonconformist weak ; " and
he candidly confesses that the superior learning of the
Church writers impressed him. Among these writers,
he has mentioned in liis life Downham, Sprint, and
Burgess, and elsewhere he has mentioned Hooker,
with whose great work, as well as with his sermons,
he frequently shows his familiarity. He had also
" turned over Cartwright and Whitgift. " On the
whole, he takes a fair and discriminating view of the
controversy at this date. In ceremonies such as kneel-
ing, and the ring in marriage, he saw no ground for
scruple. The surplice and the cross in baptism seemed
to him less lawful, and the latter he never once used.
A form of prayer and liturgy he judged to be un-
doubtedly lawful, and in some cases lawfully imposed ;
but there appeared to him much disorder and defec-
tiveness in the Church of England liturgy in particu-
lar. He also became doubtful about subscription, and
greatly deplored the want of discipline in the Church.
These were his mature convictions after ordination,
302 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
wliich he received when he was about twenty-three
years of age. He confesses that there were some sub-
jects which he had not, at this date, examined with
the care that he ought to have done. He had never
once read over the Book of Ordination or the Book of
Homilies, nor did, he sufficiently understand certain
controverted points in the Thirty-nine Articles.
Following his ordination, he was, about 1638, ap-
pointed to be head-master of a school established at
Dudley. Here, in the parish church, he preached his
first sermon. Here, also, he studied more at length
the subject of Conformity, and became a zealous advo-
cate for it. He " daily disputed against the Non-
conformists, " whose censoriousness and inclination
towards separation he judged to be a threatening evil
— as much contrary to Christian charity on one side,
as persecution was on the other.
He continued in Dudley about a year, when he re-
ceived an invitation to Bridgenorth, the second town
in Shropshire, to be assistant to the incumbent there.
He considered it his duty to accept the invitation ;
the employment exactly suited him, as he was left at
liberty in certain particulars, in regard to the obli-
gation of which he was beginning to feel uneasy.
The minister of the place, Mr William Madstard, is
described as " a grave and severe ancient divine, very
honest and conscionable, and an excellent preacher,
but somewhat afflicted with want of maintenance, and
much more with a dead-hearted unprofitable people."
Here he preached with great zeal and to a very full
congregation ; but he complains that, although his
labours were not without success, the people generally
were very ignorant, and given to " tippling, ill com-
pany, and dead-heartedness." The freedom which
BAXTER. 303
he enjoyed from all restraint in the discharge of his
duty greatly pleased him ; he used the Common Prayer,
but he never administered the Lord's Supper, nor ever
baptised any child Avith the sign of the cross, nor ever
wore the surplice. This freedom of action, combined
with his youthful fervour of feeling — for he never any-
where " preached with more vehement desire of men's
conversion " — evidently made his work in Bridgenorth
pleasing to him, notwithstanding the small results that
seemed to follow it.
The first thing that disturbed him, and led him to
renewed reflection on Church government, was the
Et cmtcra oath, as it was called, which required the
clerg}" to swear that they would " never consent to the
alteration of the present government of the Church hy
Archbishops, Bishops, Deans, Archdeacons, &c." The
attempt to enforce an obligation of this nature, it may
be imagined, made a great commotion. Many, even
of the Conforming clergy, were not disposed to bind
themselves thus arbitrarily and blindly ; only the
Laudian section, who maintained that Episcopacy was
jure divino, and that the royal will in itself was abso-
lutely authoritative in ecclesiastical government, could
honestly subscribe it. The measure was equally igno-
rant and outrageous — like many other acts of Laud's
administration. It compassed no adequate purpose,
while it called forth the strongest animosity, and ral-
lied in opposition the intelligence and the conscience
of the nation.
A meeting of clergy was held at Bridgenorth to
" debate the business," and Baxter distinguished him-
self by his vigorous hostility to the oath. His re-
newed investigation and discussion of the subject
shook his faith in Episcopal government altogether, or
304 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
at least in tlie " English diocesan frame." A system
which admitted of such tyrannical action, and which,
for practical purposes of moral discipline, was so power-
less, he at length became satisfied was a " heterogenial
thing," quite unlike the primitive Episcopacy. And
so it was, as he himself says, that the Et ccetera oath
became the means of alienating him and many others
from the moderate conformity in which they desired
to spend their lives, and rousing them " to look about
them, and understand what they did."
This occurred on the eve of the Scottish war, when
the Covenant excitement had broken forth, and the
noise of the successful opposition made in Scotland to
the royal authority was spreading into England, and
kindling into flame the discontent arising from the
exaction of Ship-money. The national agitation was
extreme. Years of misgovernment had embittered the
country, and the most arbitrary interferences outraged
the rights of the people and the Church, without com-
pacting the interests of Government. The spirit of
loyalty and reverence was wearing out, while the ris-
ing discontent was only met by insolence and violence.
The Scottish army at length marched into England ;
and, pressed on all hands, the King was forced to call
a Parliament.
After a temporary delay, the dismissal of the Parlia-
ment, and the renewed invasion of the Scotcli, the
Long Parliament met in 1640 ; and it had no sooner
done so than it showed of what spirit it was. The
Shij)-money and the Et ccctcra oath mark the two lines
of civil and ecclesiastical reform into which it imme-
diately launched ; tlie impeachment of Strafford and of
Laud proved the stern spirit in which it was prepared to
vindicate the national rights, and avenge the national
BAXTEK. 305
injuries in botli directions. The speeches of Falkland,
Digby, Grimstone, Pym, and Fiennes were printed and
greedily purchased throughout the country. The clergy,
and the bishops in particular, were the objects of loud-
voiced indignation. A special committee of Parlia-
ment sat to receive complaints and petitions against
them ; and the chairman, Mr John White, published,
as a specimen of the reports made to it, One Century
of Scandalous Minister es, showing a picture of " igno-
rance, insufficiency, drunkenness, filthiness, &c.," such
as all good men were ashamed of.
Baxter viewed all this commotion with syinpathy,
and yet without any cordial or partisan interest. He
nowhere shows any warm feeling on the Parliamentary
side. There is now and at all times a lack of political
heartiness in him. He speaks of the great movement
as from a distance, as if he were an outside spectator
of it, and held his mind in a fair and critical balance
between the parties. This gives a certain value to his
statements ; but we could have wished that he had
shown a warmer tinge of enthusiasm, and expressed
his mind more fully regarding the great public events
of his day.*
The ecclesiastical changes arising out of the Parlia-
mentary investigation soon affected his position. The
town of Kidderminster, with many other towns, sent
up a petition against their vicar, as unlearned and
quite unfit for the ministry. It stated that he preached
* He implies, indeed, that he was more zealous and decided at the
time than the line of his remarks and reflections long afterwards might
lead us to suppose he was. " Herein," he says, " I was then so zealous,
that I thought it was a great sin for men who were able to defend their
country to be useless. And I have been tempted since to think that I
was a more competent judge upon the place, where all things were before
our ej'es, than I am in the review of those daj's and actions so many
years after, when distance disadvantageth the reflection,"
V
306 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
only once a quarter, and that " so weakly as to expose
himself to the laughter of the congregation ; that he,
moreover, frequented ale-houses, while his curate, in
this respect, was worse than himself, being a ' common
tippler and drunkard,' and an 'ignorant insufficient
man,' who understood not the common points in the
children's Catechism. The vicar, with a conscious
feeling of incompetency, sought to compound the busi-
ness with the petitioners. He offered to withdraw his
present curate, and make a respectable allowance for
a preacher or lecturer, to be chosen by a committee of
the people. The inhabitants agreed to this, and after
trial of another person, at length selected Baxter to
the office. He himself was inclined to the place, and
after preaching one day, he was chosen, as he says,
" nemine contradicente. And thus I was brought by
His gracious providence to that place which had the
chiefest of my labours, and yielded me the greatest
fruits of comfort. And I noted the mercy of God in
this, that I never went to any place among all my life,
in all my changes, which I had before desired, designed,
or thought of (much less sought), but only to those
that I never thought of, till the sudden invitation did
surprise me."
Kidderminster attracted Baxter from the large field
of usefulness that it opened to him. There was a full
congregation and "most convenient temple;" and,
although the people, for the greater part, were igno-
rant, rude, and riotous, like those at Bridgenorth,
there were among them a small company of converts
— humble and godly folks — of good conversation,
who were a sort of leaven among the rest of the
community. He was encouraged also by the fact that
there had never been any " lively serious " preaching
BAXTER. 307
in the place, for his experience at Briclgenorth had
made him resolve that he would never go among a
people who had been "hardened in unprofitableness
under an awakening ministry." His ultimate success
corresponded to the heartiness of his zeal and the
affection and earnestness with which he entered upon
his duties. It is not till his second settlement at
Kidderminster, however, that we are invited to con-
sider his pastoral relations there. He had to submit
to a temporary exile from it, and during this period
we are carried with him into the midst of more excit-
ing scenes.
The immediate cause of Baxter's retirement from
Kidderminster was the extreme hostility between the
Eoyalist and Parliamentary parties in the town. An
order had been received from the Parliament to demo-
lish all statues and images in the churches and church-
yard ; he approved of the order, but did not interfere,
he says, in the execution of it. The multitude, how-
ever, fixed the blame upon him, and he only escaped
from assault by being absent from the town at the
time. WJien the excitement was beginning to quiet,
it was renewed by the reading of the King's declara-
tion and the preparations for war. The mob of the
town was strongly Ptoyalist ; they had got the cry,
" Down with the Eoundheads ! " which they vocifer-
ated whenever any stranger appeared in the streets
with " short hair and a civil habit," and followed up
their insolence by personal violence. Baxter was ad-
vised to withdraw till the excitement died down. He
proceeded to Gloucester, where he remained a month,
and where he made acquaintance with the new forms
of religious zeal which were every\vliere springing up
in the country. A small party of Anabaptists were
308 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
labouring with great keenness in this city to promote
their views; while the minister, a hot and impatient
man, tended, by liis opposition, to harden, rather than
convince them. Other sects were lil^ewise spreading,
and Baxter gazed with amazement on the dogmatic
conflicts that surrounded him. After a short resi-
dence here, he returned to Kidderminster, and made
an effort to settle once more among his people; but
the contentions continued so violent that he was
under the necessity of again withdrawing ; the fuiy of
faction was such in the town and neighbourhood as to
interrupt all useful discharge of his duties.
This Avas in October 1642, on the eve of the battle
of Edgehill. He had retired to Alcester, and, while
preaching there for his friend Mr Samuel Clark, on
the morning of the 23d, " the people heard the cannon
play." He has given a graphic description of what
he heard and saw. " When the sermon was done in
the afternoon the report was more audible, which
made us all long to hear of the success. About sun-
setting many troops fled through the town, and told
us that all was lost on the Parliament side, and that
the carriages were taken, and the waggons plundered,
before he came away. The townsmen sent a message
to Stratford-on-Avon to know the truth. About four
o'clock in the morning he returned, and told us that
Prince Rupert wholly routed the left wing of the Earl
of Essex's army; but while his men were plunder-
ing the waggons, the main body and the right wing-
routed the rest of the King's army, took his stand-
ard, but lost it again; killed General the Earl of
Lindsay, and took his son prisoner ; that few persons
of quality on the side of the army were lost ; that the
loss of the left wing happened through the treachery
BAXTER. 309
of Sir Faithful Fortescue, Major to Lord Fielding's regi-
ment of horse, who turned to the King when he should
have charged; and that the victory was obtained
principally by Colonel Hollis's regiment of red-coats,
and the Earl of Essex's own regiment and life-guard,
where Sir Philip Stapleton, Sir Arthur Haselriggs,
and Colonel Urrey, did much." Next morning Baxter
visited tlie battle-field, while the two armies still re-
mained facing one another "about a mile off." There
were about a thousand dead bodies in the field be-
tween them ; and many, he supposes, had been already
buried.
His plans were now very uncertain. He was unable
to live at Kidderminster, with soldiers of the one side
or the other constantly among the people stirring up
tumult, and the city exposed to the fury of the con-
tending parties. He had neither money nor friends,
and he knew not where to turn. At length he was
induced to go to Coventry, wdiere he had an old ac-
quaintance, and here he proposed to stay tiU one of
the parties had obtained the victory, and the war was
ended, which, he thought, must happen within a few
days or weeks, in the event of another battle. This
idea of the speedy termination of the war was a pre-
vailing one at its commencement. In this expecta-
tion, however, he was soon undeceived ; and when he
was thinking anew what he should do, he received
very opportunely an offer from the Governor of Co-
ventry to take up his abode with him and preach to
the soldiers. He embraced the offer, but refused to
receive any commission as a chaplain in the army.
He continued during a year to discharge this duty,
preaching once a-week to the soldiers, and once on the
Lord's day to the people. He then removed to Shrop-
310 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
shire for two months, in order that he might be of
assistance to his father, who liad suffered amidst the
troubles of the time ; after which he returned to Co-
ventry, and continued in the discharge of his former
duty for another year.
Here, upon the whole, he lived a peaceable life, con-
sidering the distractions in which the country w^as
plunged. His only trouble was the Sectaries. Some
of Sir Harry Vane's " party from New England " had
arrived in the place, and " one Anabaptist tailor,"
by his restless heresy, disturbed the whole garrison.
Baxter courted encounter with them, and, by his con-
stant vigilance, and ready powers of argument, met
them at every point, so that they did not succeed with
the Coventry soldiers as with the rest of the army.
He preached over " all the controversies against the
Anabaptists first, and then against the Separatists;
and, in private, his neighbours and many of the foot
soldiers, were able to baffle both Separatists, Anabap-
tists, and Antinomians."
It was during this period of his second residence
at Coventry that he took the Covenant, and openly
declared himself on the side of the Parliament, both
of which steps, but the first especially, he afterwards
regretted. His idea of the Covenant was that it was
mainly intended as a test for soldiers and garrisons ;
he did not anticipate that it should be exalted, as it
was, into a national badge.
While he continued at Coventry in comparative
peace, every day brought him the new^s of the pro-
gress of the war, — of some fight or another, — or some
garrison or another, — lost or won. "Like men," he says,
" in a dry house, who hear the storms abroad," he
heard from his retreat the sounds of siecre and battle.
BAXTER, 3X1
The "two Newbury fights, Gloucester siege, the mar-
vellous sieges of Plymouth, Lime, and Taunton, Sir
William Waller's successes and losses, the loss at
Newark, the slaughter at Bolton, the greatest fight of
all at York " (Marston Moor), came in rapid succes-
sion, so that every morning he looked for the news of
some fresh triumph or disaster. It was a terrible
time, he confesses: "miserable and bloody days, in
which he was the most honourable who could kill
most of his enemies. "
During the same period those great changes in the
leaders and the character of the war took place which
are marked by the self-denying ordinance. The Earls
of Essex and Manchester, and Sir William Waller, dis-
appeared from the scene, and Faii-fax and Cromwell
took their place. Baxter throws no light on these
movements. Sir Harry Vane in the Commons, and
Cromwell in the army, appear to him to explain all.
Both of those leaders, and Cromwell especially, he
heartily detested. It is difficult to say to what ex-
tent the traditionary view of Cromwell's character as
a deeply-designing hypocrite, who planned the whole
issue of events to serve his selfish aggrandisement, has
been owing to Baxter's strong and unhesitating repre-
sentations. His statements are certainly very confident,
and must have had great influence on many minds.
There seems to have been a natural antipathy between
the two men. Cromwell's conduct, when Baxter visited
the army, is significant of his feeling ; Baxter's com-
ments on the character and motives of the General show
a vein of personal dislike, as well as misunderstanding.
His whole description of the army and its leaders is,
on the face of it, strongly coloured by the hues of his
own discontent. It deserves consideration as being
312 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
that of an eyewitness and an honest man, who would
report nothing but what strictly seemed to him the
truth. But its querulous and dogmatic tone, and the
wounded self-esteem which it betrays, are enough to
caution us against the accuracy of its representations.
It was the noise of the great victory of Naseby,
which sounded loud in the ears of the Coventry garri-
son, not far off, and a wish to see some friends whom
he had not seen for years, that carried Baxter to the
quarters of the army. He does not seem to have had
any intention of remaining ; but he felt great curiosity
as to the state of religious feeling among the soldiers
and their leaders, and some anxiety as to his own
reception. He was astonished at the one and disap-
pointed at the other. " We that lived quietly at
Coventry," he says, " did keep to our old principles ;
we were unfeignedly for King and Parliament ; we
believed that the war was only to save the Parliament
and kingdom from Papists and delinquents. . . .
But when I came to the army among Cromwell's
soldiers, I found a new face of things which I never
dreamed of : I heard the plotting heads very hot upon
that which intimated their intention to subvert both
Church and State. Independency and Anabaptistry
were most prevalent ; Antinomianism and Armenian-
ism were equally distributed. Abundance of the
common troopers and many of the officers I found to
be honest, sober, orthodox men, and others tractable,
ready to hear the truth, and of upright intentions ; but
a few proud, self-conceited, hot-headed sectaries had
got into the highest places, and were Cromwell's chief
favourites, and by their very heat and activity bore
down the rest, or carried them along with them, and
were the soul of the army, though much fewer in num-
BAXTER. 313
ber than the rest. I perceived that they took tlie King
for a tyrant and an enemy, and really intended absohitely
to master him or ruin him ; and that they thought if
they might fight against him, they might kill or con-
quer him. . . . They were far from thinking of a
moderate Episcopacy, or of any healing way between
the Episcopal and the Presbyterians. They most hon-
oured the Separatists, Anabaptists, and Antinomians ;
but Cromwell and Ms Council took on them to Join them-
selves to no party, hut to he for the lihcrtij of all. Two
sects, I perceived, they did so commonly and bitterly
speak against, that it Avas done in mere design to make
them odious to the soldiers and to all the land ; and
that was — 1. The Scots, and with them all Presbyte-
rians, but especially the ministers, whom they called
Priests and Priesthyters, and Dryvines and the Dissembly
men, and such like ; 2. The committees of the several
counties, and all the soldiers that were under them
that were not of their mind and way."
Baxter was deeply concerned by this state of things.
It opened to him suddenly a new view of the prospects
of the struggle and of the dangers to which the country
was exposed. He blamed himself and others for their
inattention to the religious condition of the soldiers ;
and particularly accused himself for having declined
an invitation, which he had received some time before,
from Cromwell, to join his famous troop of horse as
their chaplain. The men of the troop, he says, had
all subscribed the invitation, but he had not only sent
them a denial, but a rebuke of their way of thinking.
Afterwards he had met with Cromwell at Leicester,
who had personally remonstrated with him on his
refusal. He says nothing more of this meeting ; but
it seems pretty clear that it had been a testing one on
314 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
Cromwell's part. He had scanned Baxter with his
penetrating eye, and ascertained that they wonld not
suit each other. Wliether it was his scrupulous sensi-
tiveness, or his restless self-confidence, or some other
cause, it is difficult to say ; but there can be little doubt
that Cromwell decided that the zealous preacher was
not likely to prove a man after his heart. Accord-
ingly, when he made up his mind to join the army,
as chaplain to Whalley's regiment, Oliver bade him
" coldly welcome," and " never spake one word more"
to him. He was excluded from headquarters, " where
the councils and meetings of the officers were," and
soon found himself out of place. "Most of his design,"
in joining the army," as he confessed, " w^as thereby
frustrated." And not only was he destined to inactivity,
at least on the scale he desired, but he was made the
subject of scoffs on the part of the soldiers. Cromwell's
secretary " gave out that there was a reformer come
to the army to undeceive them, and to save Church
and State, with some such other jeers." Baxter attri-
butes all this coldness and insolence of the Independent
party to their having been made privy to his designs
against the Sectaries. This may have had some effect,
but his self-confidence exaggerates when he supposes
that Cromwell was likely to have any dread of his in-
fluence. The simple truth seems to be, that they did not
like each other, and that the great leader, while not in-
terfering with the preacher's activity, carefully shunned
his counsel.
According to Baxter's own confession, he had no
dealings with Cromwell during his whole stay in the
army ; he was left to infer his designs from his own
general observations and suspicions. The following
is his statement : — " All this while, though I came not
BAXTER. 315
near Cromwell, his designs were visible, and I saw liim
continually acting his part. The Lord-General suffered
him to govern and do all, and to choose almost all the
officers of the army. He first made Ireton Commis-
sary-General ; and when any troop or company was to
be disposed, or any considerable officer's place was
void, he was sure to put a Sectary in the place ; and
when the brunt of the war was over, he looked not so
much at their valour as their opinions " (an accusation
certainly inconsistent with the character of Crom-
well and even with Baxter's own subsequent state-
ment as to Cromwell's disguise of his own opinions.
No man was less likely than Cromwell to prefer
opinions to character) ; " so that by degrees he had
headed the greatest part of the army with Anabaptists,
Antinomians, Seekers, or Separatists at best. All
these he led together hy the jwint of liberty of conscience,
which was the common interest in wliich they did
imite. Yet all the sober party were carried on by his
profession that he only promoted the universal interest
of the godly, without any distinction or partiality at
all ; but still when a place fell void it was twenty to
one but a Sectary had it ; and if a godly man of any
other mind or temper had a mind to leave the army,
he would secretly or openly further it. Yet he did not
openly profess what ojDinion he was of himself, but the
most that he said for any one was for Anabaptism and
Antinomianism, which he usually seemed to own."
The companion picture of Harrison is very good,
and well worth quoting. There is much less ill na-
ture in it. " Harrison, who was then great with him
(Cromwell), was for the same opinions. He would
not dispute with me at all" (he knew his disputant
obviously too well) ; " but he would as good discourse
316 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
very fluently from out himself on the excellency of
free grace, though he had some misunderstandings of
free grace himself He was a man of excellent natu-
ral parts for affection and oratory, but not well seen on
the principles of his religion ; of a sanguine com-
plexion, naturally of such vivacity, hilarity, and alac-
rity, as another man hath when he hath drunken a
cup too much ; but naturally, also, so far from humble
thoughts of liimself, that pride was his ruin."
Baxter, it is clear, had no sympathy with the party
rising into power. Slow to identify himself with the
revolution in its earlier stages, it soon outran, in its
course, all his views as to the need of change. If
not in all things formally a Presbyterian — for he ob-
jects strongly to various points of their discipline (the
institvition of lay elders, for example), and was "not
of their mind in any part of the Government which
they would have set up " — he was yet more of a Pres-
byterian than he was anything else ; and politically
his opinions did not go at all beyond theirs. He was
" unfeignedly for King and Parliament" against Pa-
pists and Schismatics. So he " understood the Cove-
nant ; " and he felt at a loss to understand the deeper
and more implacable form which the war gradually
assumed. To him, it represented nothing but the ma-
chination of selfish and unprincipled men. He had no
perception of the deeper currents of national feeling,
growing out of the reaction from long years of dis-
graceful oppression, which were finding vent with the
continued course of the struggle, and bearing men on
they scarcely knew whither.
The same narrowness of apprehension and sympathy
prevented him from understanding the various parties
in the army, and the diverse sects which had sprung
BAXTER. 317
up in the country. He has given us descriptions of
these parties and sects ; but there is a want of discri-
mination in liis colouring, and a lack of charity in his
judgments. Especially, he shows a defective insight
into the character of the spiritual atmosphere around
him — the teeming source of the conflicting opinions on
which he looked with amazement.
The relaxation of the bonds of religious authority
which had so long weighed upon the religious con-
science of England, brought with it an upheaving of
the elements which had been not merely suppressed,
but treated with scorn and insult. In the first rise of
the English Eeformation, the principle of individual
responsibility had no scope : it took little or no part.
The course of reform was arranged by the wisdom of
the State, and the policy of certain Church leaders.
And Avhen the principle of religious liberty began
to show itself in the earlier manifestations of Puri-
tanism, it was thwarted and crushed at every point.
Authority held its own powerfully against it, not
merely by the right of possession, but beyond doubt
also, as we have seen, by the influence of learning
and talent, impersonated in Hooker, Downham, and
others. The result of this was, that the spring of
religious liberty was driven inwards to nurse itself
upon its own discontent, and to rebound, when the op-
portunity came, with a more violent and lawless effect
than it would otherwise have done. For it is not to be
supposed that a principle which has its root in the re-
ligious conscience, can be defeated by any arguments,
however ingenious and powerful, against some of its
manifestations. Even if we allow Hooker's great
argument to be triumphant against the Puritan tenet
of his day, which sought to erect the text of Scripture
318 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
into an absolute standard of ecclesiastical government
and policy, it had not and could have no effect against
the deeper principle of the movement, which testified
to the indefeasible right of the human conscience to
judge for itself in matters of religion. And this prin-
ciple, accordingly, under protracted restraint, only con-
tinued to gather a more heated intensity, — destined to
break forth into the wildest forms as soon as the hand
of authority was relaxed. The same spiritual force
which, at the time of the Eeformation, relieved itself
in such religious excesses as Anabaptism in Germany,
and Libertinism in France, — having been longer con-
fined in England, — at length burst forth in a greater
excess, corresponding to its maturity, and the embit-
tering restraints in which it had been held. The ele-
ment of religious liberty, cast suddenly loose, broke
out into the most lawless and extravagant forms. The
individual conscience, rioting in its sense of freedom,
knew not its own weakness.
This is the natural explanation of the numerous
sects which now sprang up in England. The succes-
sive manifestations of the religious excitement show
a constant advance, a progressive outburst, of the
principle of individual liberty in religion. Presbyte-
rianism was the first expression of the principle, and
long continued its only noticeable expression. During
the whole reign of Elizabeth, and even of James, the
religious restlessness of the country scarcely vindicated
for itself any free movement save in this direction.
The Presbyterian platform of Church government, with
its recognition of the popular voice in preaching and
discipline, as opposed to the authoritative rule of bish-
ops and archbishops, and a mere service of prayer and
homily — this was all the aim of Puritanism in its
BAXTER. 319
primary forms. The Presbyterians were so far from
letting go the element of authority, that they gave it,
in the hands of the clergy, as the interpreters of Scrip-
ture and the special administrators of discipline, a
peculiar prominence. It was the lack of discipline
and of Church authority, in controlling the lives and
opinions of clergy and iaity, as may be seen from our
present sketch, and many other sources, which was
one of their chief complaints against the prelatical
system of the time. Baxter never advanced beyond
Presbyterianism. The element of clerical authority
which it embodied, and its machinery of ecclesiastical
inquisition, continued always to be of great value in
his eyes.
It was not to be expected, however, that the reli-
gious feeling of the country, when once fairly let
loose, should stoj) at this point. The exchange of
the authority of Bishops for that of Presbyters was
not likely to content the popular conscience. Ac-
cordingly, so soon as the war commenced, and all
bonds of ecclesiastical control were dissolved, the
excited religious feeling gave itself full vent, and
burst forth in a great variety of forms. IndejDcn-
dency, Anabaptism, and the whole brood of sects
depicted by Baxter — Vanists, Seekers, Eanters, Quak-
ers, and Behmenists — rapidly arose, jostling one an-
other for pre-eminence, and filling the country with
their discordant din.
The two first of these forms of religious opinion
show the growth of religious liberty on the ecclesi-
astical side. The doctrinal peculiarities of Indepen-
dency differed, as they do to this day, but slightly
from those of Presbyterianism; and the Anabaptists
(who were as different as possible from their name-
320 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
sakes of the previous century in Germany) differed
from the Presbyterians and Independents, according
to Baxter's own statement, only " in the point of bap-
tism, or, at most, in the points of predestination, free-
will, and perseverance." Many of the most eminent
of Anabaptists, such as Bunyan, were strict Calvin-
ists. So far as the idea of the Church, however, was
concerned, they popularised the principles of the Inde-
pendents, as they in their turn had done those of the
Presbyterians. In each case the element of external
Church authority sunk more out of sight, and the con-
gregational or individual element took its place. A
hierarchy of priests and a diocesan framework had
gradually passed through Presbyteries, and a regular
order of the ministry into the absolute independence
of the Christian people, and the free call and privilege
of every one possessing the gifts to assume the pas-
torate. Still, in all these great parties the idea of
authority and of the Church was so far preserved that
the Bible was recognised as the absolute source of
religious truth, and the absolute standard of practical
morality, to be enforced upon their members by due
appliancies of discipline.
The five remaining sects noticed mark the expan-
sion of the principle of religious individualism in a
new and far deeper direction. They attacked not
merely the external ecclesiastical authority against
which the others rebelled, but the very substance of
the religious truth which all these upheld. Each of
them, though in different degrees, and with a varying
excess, sought to find the standard of religion ivithin,
rather than without — in the heart, rather than in Scrip-
ture. The objective principle of authority disappeared,
and religion resolved itself into a mere subjective
BAXTER. 321
feeling, asserting an absolute independence, and con-
taining its own sufficient warrant.
The circle of religious liberty completed itself, as it
will always do when traditionalism is entirely cast
aside, in an unrestrained freedom of the spirit, which
appeared to Baxter and Bunyan, and their dogmatic
contemporaries, mere licence and impiety. Wild
enough extravagance much of it was, but we must be
careful frequently not to accept their colouring, what-
ever credit we give to their facts. Many men, evi-
dently of deep piety and of a wide spiritual compre-
hension, as our theologian was forced to confess, were
amongst the number of these sectaries.
Baxter's idea of their origin is scarcely worthy of
his common sense, not to speak of his penetration.
Nothing will satisfy him but that they chiefly sprung
from the machinations of the Papists. We will con-
dense his account of them severally, so far as it ap-
pears interesting. The " Vanists " were, accordmg to
him, the followers of Sir Harry Vane, and "first sprung
up under him in New England, when he was gover-
nor there." Their chief characteristic was an obscure
mysticism, which tended to exalt the spiritual and
internal character of religion. " Their views were
so cloudily formed and expressed, that few could
understand them." They claimed universal liberty
of conscience, and the entire independence of reli-
gion from the interference of the civil magistrate.
Lord Brook, and Sterry and Sprigge, both men
of name and fame in their day, belonged to this
party. Of Sterry, Baxter speaks in his life with
great ill-nature, punning somewhat wretchedly upon
his name in conjunction with that of Yane (" vanity
and sterility were never more happily conjoined");
X
322 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
while, in his Catholic Theology, on the other hand,
after having perused a treatise of his on Free Will, he
commends him in high terms. " I found in him," he
says, "the same notions as in Sir Harry Vane; but all
handled with much more strength of parts and rap-
ture of highest devotion and candour towards all
others than I expected. His preface is a most excel-
lent persuasive to universal charity. Love was never
more extolled than throughout this book. Doubtless
his head was strong, his wit admirably pregnant, his
searching studies hard and sublime, and, I think, his
heart replenished with holy love to God, and great
charity and moderation and peaceableness towards
men; insomuch that I heartily repent that I so far
believed fame as to think somewhat hardlier of him
and his few adherents than I now think they deserve."
This retractation is worthy of Baxter's heart, as it
teaches a universal lesson. If rival theologians would
try to understand, rather than to overcome, one another,
what increase of truth and charity might be the issue !
How many a logical Baxter still assails an intuitive
Sterry in the Christian world, and even by poor wit
tries to cover him with ridicule, while the same " holy
love to God" may really be warming the heart of each,
and all the difference between them be some wretched
convention of language, covering no life of meaning,
but only hiding the one from the appreciation of the
other, and both, it may be, from a more comprehensive
appreciation of the truth !
One is glad to record this piece of repentant charity
on Baxter's part. The only regret is that it was so
much needed, and not so comprehensive as it ought
to have been. Vane, no less than Sterry, claimed
some apology. His whole conception of Vane is an
BAXTER. 323
unworthy one, and the language in which he speaks
of him harsh and unjust.
The second sect he describes as Seekers. "These
maintained that our Scriptures were uncertain; that
present miracles are necessary to faith ; that our
ministry is null and without authority, and our wor-
ship and ordinances unnecessary or vain ; the true
church, ministry, scripture, and ordinances being lost,
for which they are now seeking. I quickly found
that the Papists principally hatched and actuated
their sect." They were as nearly connected, probably,
with the Presbyterians as with the Papists. Their
origin must be sought in the disorganised condition
of religious feeling. Where all was unfixed, these
men were in search of a satisfying truth. In the
absence of any authoritative church, they were seek-
ers after one. They were therefore the extreme reac-
tionists from Popery.
" The third sect was the Planters. These also made
it their business, as the former, to set up the right of
nature in men, under the name of Christ, and to dis-
honour and cry down the Church, the Scripture, the
present ministry, and our worship and ordinances.
They called men to hearken to Christ within them ;
but in that they enjoined a cursed doctrine of liber-
tinism which brought them all to abominable filthi-
ness of life. They taught, as the Familists, that God
regardeth not the actions of the outward man, but of
the heart, and that to the pure all things are pure
(even things forbidden) ; and so, as allowed by God,
they speak most hideous words of blasphemy, and
many of them committed whoredoms commonly."
There were many facts in the social life of the period
that unhappily bear out Baxter's description of the
324 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
Eanters. Bunyaii, we shall find, had a Eanter friend,
who rapidly passed from a high state of religious ex-
altation to a state of moral libertinism. It was one
of the characteristics of the time, just as it had been
among the Zwickau fanatics of Germany, and the
Libertines of Switzerland and France, to run from ex-
treme religious fervour to the wildest practical licence.
At the same time, it is not history, but calumny, to
regard the whole sect as nothing less than immoral
fanatics, who wilfully revelled in blasphemy and licen-
tiousness. Some who had been strict professors of
religion* allied themselves to it, and were influenced to
do so, beyond doubt, by some real element of spiritual
life which it embodied. Any such spiritual life, how-
ever, soon vanished in the midst of so much excitement,
and in the entire absence of all dogmatic control ; and
the sect rapidly fell into degradation and contempt.
Their " horrid villanies," Baxter says, " speedily extin-
guished them ; so that the devil and the Jesuits quickly
found that this way would not serve their turn, and
therefore they suddenly took another."
" And that," he continues, " was the fourth sect, the
Quakers, who were but the Eanters turned from horrid
profaneness and blasphemy to a life of great austerity
on the other side. Their doctrines were mostly the
same with the Eanters : they made the light which
every man hath within him to be his sufficient rule ;
and consequently the Scripture and the ministry were
set light by. They spoke much for the dwelling and
the working of the Spirit in us, but little of justifi-
cation and the pardon of sin, and our reconciliation
with God through Jesus Christ. They pretend their
dependence on the Spirit against set times of prayer,
* Baxter's Life, p. 77. Folio.
BAXTER. 325
and against sacraments. They will not have the Scrip-
tures called the Word of God; their i^rincipal zeal
lieth in railing at ministers, and in refusing to swear
before a magistrate, or to put off their hat to any, or to
say you instead of tliou or thee. At first they did use
to fall into tremblings and sometimes vomitings in their
meetings, and pretended to be violently acted upon by
the Spirit, but now that is ceased. They only meet,
and he that pretendeth to be moved by the Spirit
speaketh; and sometimes they say nothing, but sit
an hour or more in silence, and depart. Their chief
leader, James Nayler, acted the part of Christ at Bristol,
according to much of the history of the Gospel ; and
was long laid in Bridewell for it, and his tongue bored
as a blasphemer by the Parliament. Many Franciscan
friars and other Papists have been proved to be dis-
guised speakers in their assemblies, and to be among
them ; and it is like as the very soul of all these hor-
rible delusions."
There is not much to criticise in this picture of the
Quakers ; its separate features are historically true,
as they are lifelike, but the general impression is ex-
aggerated and ill-natured. Baxter's belief of the con-
nection of this sect with the Papists was no doubt
strengthened by the accidental political relations into
which the two bodies were thrown towards each other
in the latter part of his life. Disowned alike by Epis-
copalians and Presbyterians, an affinity of persecution
drew them together, and they became, in the latter
years of Charles, and again in the reign of James, the
joint objects of royal favours. In such facts Baxter
saw the confirmation of his theory of their origin.
The Behmenists are the last sect enumerated by him
Their opinions "go much towards the way of the former,
326 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
for tlie sufficiency of the light of nature, the salvation
of heathens as well as Christians, and a dependence on
revelations, &c. ; but they are fewer in number, and
seem to have attained to greater meekness and conquest
of passion, than any of the rest. Their doctrine is to
be seen in Jacob Behmen's books by those that have
nothing else to do than to bestow a great deal of time
to understand him that was not willing to be easily
understood, and to know that his bombastic words
signify nothing more than before was easily known by
common familiar terms."
These sects were all more or less represented in the
army, which was the hot-bed of the prevailing extrava-
gances of opinion. The Antinomianism which so
largely characterised the religious feeling of the time
found its chief support and strength among the daring
soldiers that surrounded CromweU. The doctrines of
free grace, in the extreme reaction which took place
against the Laudian sacramental tenets, were appre-
hended by many irrespective of their moral influence.
An unbridled opinionativeness, and a consequent con-
tempt for all authority, political and moral, as well
as religious, were fostered by hosts of pamphlets,
written by such men as Overton, and the pretended
Martin-Mar-Priest,* and others. The most fierce ex-
pression of this spirit was among the Levellers, headed
by Lillburne and Bethel, who not only denied every
rule of church government, but denounced all civil
order as tyranny. " They vilified all ordinary worship ;
they were vehement against both king and all govern-
ment except popular. All their disputing was with
as much firmness as if they had been ready to draw
* These were in imitation of the Martin-Mar-Prelate pamphlets of the
Elizabethan Puritanism. Overton is supposed to have been an infideL
BAXTEK.
327
their swords upon those against whom they disputed."
^'They would bitterly scorn me," Baxter adds, "amongst
their hearers, to prejudice them before they entered
into dispute. They evaded me as much as possible ;
but when we did come to it, they drained all reason in
fierceness, and vehemency, and multitude of words."
Here again the idea of the Papists haunts him. " I
thought they were principled by the Jesuits, and acted
all for their interest and in their way. But the secret
spring was out of sight" — far below the surface of
Jesuitical intrigue certainly.
Baxter remained with the army so long as to be pre-
sent at several of its operations. Shortly after joining
it, he marched with it to Somerton ; and as he had
preached with the cannon of Naseby sounding in his
ears, so now he actually saw from the brow of a hill
on which he stood the engagement at Langport. Bethel
and Evanson, with their " troops, encountered a select
party of Goring's best horse, and charged them at
sword's point, whilst you could count three or four
hundred, and then put them to retreat." The dust was
so great, being in the very height of summer, that the
combatants could not see each other ; but he saw all
clearly from the eminence on which he stood. There
were no troops engaged but Bethel's and Evanson's,
and " a few musqueteers in the hedges." After their
repulse, Goring's army seemed to show fight again,
but on the steady advance of the Parliamentarians,
they broke and fled "before they received any charge."
" I happened to be next to Major Harrison," he adds,
"as soon as the flight began, and heard him with a
loud voice break forth into the praise of God with
fluent expression, as if he had been in a rapture."
The army proceeded to Bridgewater, whither Goring's
328 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS,
army had fled, and thence to Bristol, during the siege
of which Baxter was taken seriously ill. He recovered
just in time to see the city taken, at the cost of Bethel's
life, who " had a shot in his thigh, of which he died,
and was much lamented." He was successively pre-
sent at the sieges of Sherborne Castle and of Exeter ;
but before the completion of the latter siege, he departed
with Whalley's regiment, which was sent to watch the
royal garrison at Oxford. Whalley wintered in Buck-
inghamshire, and there laid siege to Banbury Castle,
and afterwards to Worcester, where " he lay in siege
eleven weeks," till the main army under Cromwell
again jomed him, and together they attacked Oxford.
During the winter-quarters in Buckinghamshire, at a
place called Agmondesham, Baxter had a famous tilt
with the sectaries of Bethel's troop. Establishing
himself in the reading-pew at a church where they had
come together to propagate their opinions among the
simple country people, he disputed against them alone
from morning till almost night — "for I knew their
trick," he says, " that if I had but gone out first, they
would have prated what boasting words they liked
when I was gone, and made the people believe that
they had baffled me, or got the best : therefore I stood
it out till they first rose and went away."
At Worcester he again fell ill, and having visited
London for medical advice, he was sent to Tunbridge
Wells to recruit. He was able to join the army once
more : but his health was unequal to his exertions and
anxiety of mind in the discharge of his duties, and on
a renewed attack of illness at Melbourne, near Ashby-
de-la-Zouche, he was glad to return to the hospitable
house of Sir Thomas Ptous, where he had been welcomed
and cared for during a previous illness. " Thither I
BAXTER. 329
made shift to get," lie says, " in great weakness, where
I was entertained with the greatest care and tenderness
while I continued to use the means of my recovery ;
and when I had been there a quarter of a year, I re-
turned to Kidderminster."
Thus closed Baxter's connection with the army,
which had lasted about two years * — years of trouble
and perplexity to him, aggravated by ill health and
the contrary spirit of those amidst whom he lived.
The connection was not a happy one in any respect.
He appears to have exercised but little iniluence over
the unruly soldier-saints with whom he came in con-
tact, while his naturally disputatious temper received
an imdue and almost morbid development in con-
stant conflict with their pertinacity, " disputing from
morning till almost night." On the other hand, it
is probable that he learned thus early some of the
experience to which, in later life, he gives frequent
expression — that truth is not to be found in "a multi-
tude of controversies." Certainly, if ever a man learned
this by solemn and even dire experience, it was Baxter.
His growing conviction of it could not change his
nature ; to the last he was accustomed to fight it out
with every adversary that challenged him; but with
a noble inconsistency his aspirations for peace rose
above the din of battle in which he was engaged,
and he felt it to be the weary and useless uproar it
often really was.
It was while resident at Eous Lench that he began
his career as a writer. Here he wrote the first part
of the Saints Rest, as he tells us in an address to
* He appears to have settled in Coventry in 1642, where he stayed, ac-
cording to his own statement, Uvo years. He seems to have left the army
in 1646.
330 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
" Sir Thomas Kous, baronet, and tlie Lady Jane Eous,
his wife/' which he prefixed to the work. It is plea-
sant to reflect that it was at this time — the close of a
period of turmoil in his life, and when his own weak-
ness kept him face to face with death* — that lie com-
posed the most beautiful part of the best of all his
works. How ardently must he have turned to the
contemplation of the heavenly rest ; and, amidst the
lofty raptures with which it inspired him, how poor
and dim must have seemed the world of raging sects
from which he had emerged! "Well might he say,
" How sweet the Providence which so happily forced
me to that work of meditation which I had formerly
found so profitable to my soul, and hath caused
my thoughts to feed on this heavenly subject, which
hath more benefited me than all the studies of my
life." It is remarkable, also, that the very fact which
partly led Baxter to begin this treatise — the want of
books — has given to the first part of it, which was all
that he now completed, a unity, life, and interest
wanting in many of his other writings. His tendency
to digression was checked from the lack of subjects
to feed it, and obeying merely the instinct of his
own meditative feeling and imagination, his thoughts
arrange themselves into a far more harmonious and
effective shape than they generally do. It would have
been lucky for Baxter as a writer had he more fre-
quently composed without access to books, and the na-
tural vein of meditative and hortatory rhetoric, which
was his strength, been left to flow freely, without the
incumbrances of an argumentative prolixity, which set
all patience at defiance. The second part of the
* " Living in continual expectation of death, with one foot in the
grave," he himself says. — Pref.
BAXTER. 331
Saints' Rest sliows the comparative disadvantage of
scholastic leisure, and his habitual turn for polemical
discursiveness. It is tedious and out of place. It
might be omitted, and the work improved. But as it
is, there is a touching harmony of tone in the Saints
Rest. There are few with any solemn feeling of reli-
gion who can read it unmoved ; the fervour and pas-
sion of its heavenly feeling, blending with the scenes
of glory which it depicts, the pathos of its appeals,
the ardour of its description, the enraptured sweet-
ness of some of its pictures, the affection, force, and
hurry of its eloquence when he gives free rein to
his spiritual impulses, and brushes unheeding and
headlong past the tangled brakes of logic that lie
in wait for him — all render it one of the most im-
pressive religious treatises which have descended to
us from the seventeenth century. Much of its im-
pressiveness flows from the intensity of the Puritan
feeling which it everywhere reflects, and the vivid
reahsation of the unseen, in which this feeling lived
and moved. The colouring of its heaven is steeped \
in the intense hues of the religious imagination of the \
time— Brook, Hampden, and Pym* were among the J
saints whom he rejoiced he should meet above. The
definitions, the arguments, many of the descriptions,
are Puritan ; yet the highest charm of the treatise is
the fulness with which it reflects the catholic ideas
of the eternal rest — the love, life, and fervour of ten-
der-hearted and universal piety that it breathes.
After a retirement of some months Baxter settled
* Baxter, it is true, cancelled these names from a subsequent edition,
after the Restoration ; but this he did merely to avoid offence to the
authorities, and not "as changing his judgment of the persons." It was
a pity, at the same time, that he did it, especially as he tells us, "this
did not satisfy" these authorities.
332 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
once more at Kidderminster : he declined the vicarage
which the people " vehemently urged upon him," but
he gladly returned among them in his old capacity.
In this, as in every other relation of his life, he showed,
so far as money was concerned, a most unselfish spirit ;
he might have secured himself in legal title to the
parish, but he did not care to do so ; his position was
legal in every substantial sense of the term, and the
treatment to which he was subjected after the Eestora-
tion, when he wished to return and minister to his
old people, was equally harsh and injurious.
Baxter remained in Kidderminster fourteen years,
during which the great events of the King's trial and
death, the war with Ireland, the triumph of Cromwell,
his difficulties, victories, and death, were all transacted.
Busy with his never - ceasing labours of preaching,
catechising, and writing, Baxter looked forth upon
these events of his time with a spirit saddened and
displeased, yet not so vexed and irritable as before.
He details the events with strong reflections on Crom-
well and his party, their "rebellion, perfidiousness,
perjury, and impudence;" but the peace which he
enjoyed during so many years to labour in his calling,
the pleasures of activity and success in which his life
was spent, exerted their natural influence of content-
ment upon his mind. During the war with Scotland,
he bestirred himself, according to his own confession,
strenuously on the side of the King ; he sympathised
in the aims, if he did not share in the plans, of Love
and others. But while Cromwell, according to his
policy of making an example, took a swift and fa-
tal vengeance on poor Love, he never even deigned
to notice Baxter's factious movements. Convinced
that he could not bend him to his will, he had too
BAXTER. 333
much magnanimity to interfere with him violently,
still more to submit him to any punishment. He
respected him, although he did not like him. This
Baxter is forced to acknowledge, although he ascribes
the conduct of the Protector to "policy" rather than
magnanimity. " When Cromwell was made Lord
Protector," he says, " he had the policy not to detect
and exasperate the ministers and others who consented
not to his government. Having seen what a stir the
engagement made before, he let men live quietly with-
out putting oaths of fidelity upon them, except mem-
bers of Parliament."
Yet Baxter's opposition, according to his own state-
ment, might well have provoked some mark of censure.
" I did seasonably and moderately," he says, " by
preaching and printing, condemn the usurpation and
the deceit which was the means to bring it to pass. I
did in open conference declare Cromwell and his ad-
herents to be guilty of treason and rebellion, aggravated
by perfidiousuess and hypocrisy." This, too, while he
is forced to admit the beneficent aim of Cromwell's
government in point of fact. Honesty compels from
him this admission, and it is of peculiar value in the
circumstances. " I perceived that it was his design
to do good in the main, and to promote the Gospel and
the interests of godliness more than any had done
before him, except in those particulars which were
against his own interest. The powerful means that
henceforth he trusted to for his cstaUishment was doing
good, that the people might love him, or, at least, be
willing to have his government for that good, who
were against it because it was usurpation."
It was clear from the beginning that these two men
did not suit one another. Yet Cromwell was more
334 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
tolerant and just than Baxter. In the very height of
his power, and after all Baxter's hard words, we find
the Protector courting the stern and implacable Divine.
He had avoided him in the heat of the struggle ; he
had borne with him in the crisis of his ascendancy
when his intractable temper was really dangerous : but
after the " Instrument of government" was arranged,
and power seemed settled in his hands, he sought an
interview with him, and endeavoured to impress upon
the refractory Presbyterian his views of the course of
events and of God's providence in the change of gov-
ernment. The proceeding, even in our author's invi-
dious account of it, is highly creditable to Cromwell,
while it certainly proves the high esteem in which
he himself was held, and the influence of his position.
It was no sign of weakness on the Protector's part.
He had sufiiciently shown by his magnanimous con-
duct that he had nothing to fear from men like Baxter.
He designed it, no doubt, for what it really was, a
mark of respect to his character, and an acknowledg-
ment due to his sincere convictions. Baxter, however,
remained obstinate in these convictions.
He had been sent for to London by Lord Broghill
to assist in the determination of certain " Fundamentals
of religion," with a view to the arrangements of the new
government. His opinions on this subject were very
sensible, and stand in favourable contrast to those of
the " over- orthodox doctors" — Owen, Cheynell, and
others.* While they insisted on many minute and
absurd points being introduced as fundamental, he
* Among the advantages of Baxter's visit to London at this time, and
his conferences with other divines on the subject of "Fundamentals,"
was his introduction to Archbishop Usher, Of all men of this troubled
time. Usher was one of the most catholic and peaceable in his views.
Baxter and he were very friendly, and in their notions of Church govern-
BAXTER. o35
would have had the brethren to offer Parliament the
Creed, LorcTs Prayer, and Decalogue alone as Essentials
or Fundamentals (lie preferred the former expression).
" These, he held, contained all that is necessary to
salvation," while they had been taken by all the ancient
churches " for the sum of their religion." While the
negotiation as to Fundamentals was proceeding — for, as
Baxter anticipated, it proved a " ticklish business" — he
was brought by his friend Lord Broghill to preach
before Cromwell. The occasion was too tempting, and
Baxter, preaching from 1 Cor. i. 10, regarding divisions,
gave the Lord Protector very plainly a piece of his
mind. " My plainness," he adds, " I heard, was very
displeasing to him and his courtiers, but they felt it
after. A little while after, Cromwell sent to speak to
me, and, when I came, in the presence of only three of
his chief men, he began a long and tedious speech to
me of God's providence in the change of government,
and how God had owned it, and what great things he
had done at home and abroad in the peace with Spain
and Holland. When he had wearied us all with speak-
ing thus slowly about an hour, I told him it was too
great condescension to acquaint me so fully with all
these matters which were above me ; but I told him
that we took our ancient monarchy to be a blessing
and not an evil to the land, and honestly craved his
patience that I might ask him how England had ever
forfeited that blessing, "S,nd unto whom that forfeiture
was made ? Upon that question he was awakened into
some passion, and then told me it was no forfeiture,
ment they could have perfectly united. It was Usher's scheme of re-
duced Episcopacy, we shall see, which he and the other Presbyterian
divines made the basis of their proposed compromise with the prelates
of the Restoration.
336 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
but God had changed it as pleased Him : and then he
let fly at the Parliament which thwarted him ; and
especially by name at four or five of those members
who were my chief acquaintances, whom I presumed
to defend against his passion, and thus four or five
hours were spent." A few days after, Cromwell had
another interview with our divine, to hear his "judg-
ment about liberty of conscience," but with an equal
want of success. Again Baxter complains of his " slow
tedious speech," and still more of the speeches of two
of his company, " in such like tedious, but more igno-
rant." He offered to tell him more of his mind " in
writing in two sheets, than in that way of speaking in
many days." There is an amusing gravity in this
offer. Cromwell was confessedly tedious and slow of
speech ; but Baxter, of all men, professing brevity in
writing ! Two sheets ! Two hundred sheets would
have been a more likely result, and that " preface on
the subject," which he had " by him," we make no
doubt that Cromwell never found time to read it. He
received the paper. " I scarcely believe," its author
confesses, " that he ever read it, for I saw that what
he learned must he from himself T
The view in which Baxter is now presented is al-
most the only public glimpse that we get of him
during the eventful fourteen years he spent at Kidder-
minster. His time was mainly filled up with nobler
labours than any he was capable of rendering in the
career of political action. His zealous opinionative-
ness prevented him from entering into hearty and har-
monious co-operation with others in carrying out any
line of practical negotiation. In this respect he was no
leader. The politics of Puritanism could never claim
him as a warm ally or representative. It is its reli-
BAXTER. 337
gious tliougiit and pastoral earnestness, and not its
civil ambition, that lie impersonated.
He has left us details of his pastoral labours during
these years — details which represent a life of unceasmg
activity and vigorous and joyous earnestness. He was
indeed a " workman not needing to be ashamed ; " and
such work as he had at Kidderminster, and the free
scope in which he had to do it, were entirely to his
heart's content. There is no part of his life of which
he writes with such zest : his constitutional queru-
lousness rises almost into buoyancy of spirit, as he
dwells upon — 1. His employment ; 2. His successes ;
and, 3. The advantages which he enjoyed.
1. Before the wars — that is, during his first stay — he
preached twice each Lord's-clay ; but after the war
" but once, and once every Thursday, besides occasional
sermons." Two days every week, (Mondays and Tues-
days), he and his assistant took fourteen families be-
tween them for private catechism and conference.
He spent about an hour with a family, and admitted
no others to be present. He devoted the afternoons to
this work, the forenoons to study. On the evening of
Thursdays he met with his neighbours at his house,
when one of them repeated the sermon, and then they
propounded any doubt or inquiries that occurred to
them, and he " resolved these doubts." On the first
Wednesday of every month he held a meeting for
parish discipline ; and every first Thursday in the
month the clergy met for discipline and disputation ;
and in those disputations it fell to his lot to be " al-
most constant moderator," when he usually prepared
a "written determination." All this he recalls as his
" mercies and delights, and not as his burdens. " Such
was his "sweet and acceptable employment."
Y
338 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
2. He next recounts his successes. And lie will not
suppress his satisfaction, he says, with a joyous elation,
" though I foreknow that the malignant will impute
the mention of it to pride and ostentation. For it is
the sacrifice of thanksgiving which I owe to my most
gracious God, which I will not deny Him for fear of
being censured as proud." His preaching became very
popular after the first " burst of opposition" which he
had experienced from the "rabble" before the wars. The
congregation increased gTeatly, so that they were fain
to build five galleries to the church, which in itself
was very capacious, and the most commodious and con-
venient that he was ever in. The private meetings also
were full. On the Lord's-day there was no disorder,
" but you might hear an hundred families singing
psalms and repeating sermons as you passed through
the streets. In a word, when I came thither first there
was about one family in a street that worshipped God
and called on His name ; and when I came away, there
were some streets where there was not found one family
on the side of a street that did not do so." Although
the administration of the Lord's Supper was so ordered
by him as to displease many, he had 600 communicants,
of whom he says, " There were not twelve that I had
not good hopes as to their sincerity." " Some of the
poor men did competently understand the body of divi-
nity, and were able to judge in difficult controversies.
Some of them were so able in prayer, that very few
ministers did match them in order and fulness and apt
expressions, and holy oratory with fervency. Abund-
ance of them were able to pray veiy laudably with their
families, or with others. The temper of their minds
and the innoeency of their lives were much more laud-
able than their parts"
BAXTER. 339
And while Baxter was thus successful with his own
parishioners and flock, his relations with his brethren
of the ministry were also of a happy and useful char-
acter. This was a source of more likely difficulty to
him than any other, from the peculiarity of his tem-
per ; but the felicity of his position at Kidderminster
seems to have triumphed even here. " Our disputa-
tions," he says, " proved not unprofitable. Our meet-
ings were never contentious, but always comfortable ;
we take great delight in the company of each other, so
that I know that the remembrace of those days is plea-
sant both to them and me."
3. The thought of his successes suggests that of his
" advantages." There were certain accidents of his
position which appeared to him of great service in
promoting his usefulness at Kidderminster, upon which
he reflected with gratitude, and which he details chiefly
with a view to other men's experience in managing
ignorant and sinful parishes. The first advantage
that he appears to himself to have enjoyed was the
peculiar condition of the people, who had not before
been hardened under an awakening ministry, as he
considered the people of Bridgenorth to have been.
" If they had been sermon-proof," he says, " I should
have expected less." His next and main advantage
was his own effective preaching. "I was then," he
adds, " in the vigour of my spirits, and had naturally
a familiar moving voice (which is a great matter
with the common hearers); and doing all in bodily
weakness, as a dying man, my soul was the more
easily brought to seriousness, and to preach ' as a
dying man to dying men.' For drowsy formality
and customariness doth but stupify the hearers
and rock them asleep. It must be serious preaching
340 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
which will make men serious in hearmg and obey-
ing it."
With the recommendation of a "familiar moving
voice," it is easy to conceive how impressive and
powerful Baxter must have been as a preacher. There
is a simplicity, directness, and energy in his sermon-
style, tliat goes to the heart even now, and which
must have told with a wonderfully stimulating effect
upon his Kidderminster hearers. In the pulpit he
was raised above the scholastic medium of thought
and definition on which his mind was otherwise apt
to dwell. As a " dying man," face to face with " dying
men," he became vehemently practical. The flame of
an overpowering conviction burning in his own soul,
communicated life and ardour to all his words. His
sermons are certainly digressive and tedious according
to our modern notions. But we must remember that
what would now be intolerable tedium, was not only
borne cheerfully, but expected and welcomed in his
age. The thoughts of all men of the time, at least
of all that Baxter was likely to address, were intensely
theological. AVhat now seem to many mere abstrac-
tions, were to his generation living realities, — forces
moving men to fight and die. Discussions, whose
irrelevancy offends us, and digressions over which we
weary, were instinct with meaning to his audiences.
Prolixity, which we contemplate with a shudder, may
have excited in them enthusiasm. A vanished charm
must have lain in division and subdivision — in the
mere ringing, in varied cadences, of the same note of
exhortation, alarm, or consolation. Beyond doubt,
there was in all this something peculiarly consonant to
an age in which, while there was a pervading and keen
excitement about religion, there was evidently much
BAXTER. 341
ignorance and dulness of religious apprehension. In
no respect is the age more remarkable. The very-
rapidity with which sects arose on all hands, shows
how narrowness of religious intelligence mingled with
excitement of religious feeling.
The key to much of the characteristic literature of the
time lies in this peculiar combination. A time of in-
tense faith, with little speculative or historical enlight-
enment, was necessarily one of endless religious con-
troversy and sermonising. Men who were moved to
the depth of their hearts by religious convictions — the
interest of whose life was centred in the character of
their theological belief — and yet who had only very
dim and confused ideas of the past course of Christian
opinion and history, were necessarily cast afloat on the
preaching of the time to feed their religious cravings.
Shut within their own limited sphere, the conflicting
tenets around them acquired a novelty and supposed
potency which made them subjects of ever-renewing
attraction ; and the sermons, which were almost their
only means of theological instruction, could scarcely be
too long, — so greedily did they thirst after a knowledge
which was to them of such vital moment. While we
may object, therefore, to the length and verbosity of
these sermons, and mourn over a dulness which seems
to argue in us a lost faculty of attention, we may yet
understand how the very elaborateness and digressive
impertinences of their structure constituted, in their
own time, a chief source of their influence.
But w^e must also remember that many of Baxter's
sermons, as we have them, are really expansions of
what he preached, intended for being read rather than
being heard. The Saints' Rest itself, which in its com-
plete shape is an elaborate treatise, in four parts, filling
342 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
a goodly octavo, was originally written as a sermon,
and the Reformed Pastor equally so. We must judge
Baxter's preaching, therefore, rather from parts of such
treatises than from the whole ; and it is easy to trace
in them all places where the preacher only or mainly
is to be recognised — passages of rapid and overpower-
ing practical energy, in which every word is lit with
the passion of concentrated oratory, and which hurry
the reader with something of the same glow of feeling
which they must have kindled in those Avho heard them.
Such passages tell more than anything else what Bax-
ter's oratory must have been, when he was in " the
vigour of his spirits." Some, like Howe, may have ex-
celled him in grandeur and elevation of conception, or
in pathetic tenderness of feeling, as in The Redcejiiers
Tears over a Lost World ; others, like Flavel, sur-
passed him in piquancy and pith of idea, and homely
expressiveness of language, acting on the hearer like a
series of unexpected surprises, always stimulating and
rewarding attention ; but none approached him in
sweep and fulness of emotion, and in that sustained
and prolonged rush of fiery appeal, earnest pleading,
entreaty, or rousing alarm which constitute the most
characteristic elements of pulpit eloquence. Baxter
communes so^d to soid with his hearers ; every other
interest is withdrawn ; no colouring medium of fancy
or of mere literary effect distracts the impression ;
only the Gospel, in the urgency of its claims or the
pricelessness of its treasures, is made to fill the mind
and heart. It is this fulness of the Gospel animating
every sermon, and the conscious responsibility of pro-
claiming it — of " beseechmg man in Christ's stead to
be reconciled to God" — that gives to his highest flights
that mixture of awe and passion, of rapture and yet of
BAXTER. 343
sense and reality, which makes him unequalled as an
evangelical preacher.
Baxter's labours at Kidderminster were continued
till the eve of the Eestoration. AVitli his preaching
and pastoral visits, and clerical disputations, it might
have been supposed that his time would have been
fully occupied. But in addition to all these labours,
he published a great variety of treatises during this
period. Having once entered upon the field of author-
ship, his pen never rested. He wrote a treatise against
infidelity,* one on Christian Concord, and another on
Universal Concord; also disputations on the Sacra-
7nents and on Church Oovcrmncnt. His Call to the Un-
converted, and his Reformed Pastor, with many other
tracts on special doctrines, also belong to the same
period. And not only did he write of Christian con-
cord, but he prosecuted zealously various proposals of
union among the Presbyterians, Independents, and
Episcopalians, and even the Baptists. His views on
this subject drew him into controversy with Dr Owen,
who, though much less flexible in his notions, both
theological and ecclesiastical, yet exceeded our divine in
calm judgment and practical temper. These proposals
one and all failed, no less than the more famous ones
under higher auspices, in which he afterwards engaged.
But Baxter had aspirations also of another kind in
those days — aspirations which show how far his Chris-
tian zeal ranged above the level of his time, and anti-
* His Uiireasonahleness of Infidelity, directed against Clement Writer,
of Worcester, who professed to be one of the sect of Seekers, but
was either, says Baxter, a "juggling Papist or an infidel." — " An arch-
heretic, a fearful apostate, an old wolf, a subtle man, a materialist and
moralist," says Edwards, in his Gangroena. Baxter, in his later years,
wrote two additional treatises in defence of the Christian religion, one
of them against Lord Herbert's De Veriiate.
344 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
cipated the triumphs of a later missionary Christianity.
He was one of the most active in providing the means
for Elliot, the apostle of the Indians, to carry on his
great work in America. He maintained a correspond-
dence with this devoted missionary, entered most
heartily into his plans, and expressed himself with a
mingled wisdom and enthusiasm on his difficulties
and aims, well deserving of study even now. " The
industry of the Jesuits and friars, and their successes
in Congo and Japan, do shame us all save you," he says.
Perhaps no career would have better suited Baxter
himself than one like Elliot's, in which his fervid and
untiring zeal, his evangelical energy, and his impulses
to independent movement and government, would have
had free and unbounded scope.
The death of Cromwell, and the accession and re-
signation of his son Eichard, found Baxter still at Kid-
derminster. It is remarkable that, while he looked
upon the government of the father with unfavourable
and even bitterly hostile feelings, he regarded the
government of the son with a friendly interest. The
mild respectability of Eichard's character, his domes-
tic virtues, his respect for the clergy and " the sober
people of the land," as Baxter calls them, attached
him, as well as many others, and made them readily
submit to his assumption of power. " Many sober
men that called his father no better than a traitor-
ous hypocrite, did begin to think that they owed him
subjection; which, I confess, was the case with my-
self." In this expression of o]3inion we can see already
the commencement of the scliism between the great
body of the nation, who were tired of contention, and
who hated the idea of military rule, and the soldiery
of the Commonwealth, who had virtually governed
BAXTER. 345
England by their chief during the last ten years.
Eichard Cromwell was disposed to represent this
great and peaceful body of his countrymen. He felt
himself more allied in sympathy with them than any
other, and his Parliament was composed mainly of
men of this class. They, in turn, reciprocated his
favourable dispositions ; they not only recognised a
lawful government in his person, but they recog-
nised the House of Lords, as it had been constituted
by his father, and were ready peaceably to co-operate
with it. All this, however, Avas the very reason why
the soldiery first looked on with displeasure, and then
actively interfered to overturn his Government. The
army had no wish to embroil the country ; they had
been satisfied with the late Protectorate ; but they had
no intention of letting power slip out of their hands.
Men like Fleetwood, and Lambert, and Harrison, were
not the men to permit themselves to be quietly super-
seded by the return of the civil forms of the constitu-
tion to their old ascendancy. In Oliver Cromwell
they had acknowledged at once the head of the army
and the head of the State ; in Eichard they only saw
the latter, and that in a very mild and unauthorita-
tive shape. They saw, at the same time, that the
continuance and consolidation of his power and the
power of his Parliament would prove the decay and
extinction of their own — and they resolved to prevent
such a result. An active minority in the Commons,
headed by Sir Harry Vane, abetted their designs.
There were still men like him who believed in a re-
public ; even Owen, with all his practical moderation
and foresight, was of this number.
Before such a combination of parties Eichard fell.
The officers of the army united in opposition to him ;
346 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
the more violent of the sectaries disowned him ;
" Eogers Feake, and such like firebrands, preached
them into fury, and blew the coals ; but Dr Owen and
his assistants did the main work." Richard had not
coveted power, and he retired from it without regret.
During the agitations that followed — the calling
together of the " old Eump," its dismissal once more,
the provisional government in the hands of the offi-
cers of the army, and Monk's march upon London —
Baxter still remained in his retirement. But as soon
as the crisis of the Eestoration approached, he drew
near to London. He felt the instinct of business, and
that it was well for him to be at headquarters. He
arrived in London in April 1660, and soon after,
along with Dr Manton, held an interview with Monk,
to " congratulate him." L'Estrange, in one of his scur-
rilous attacks, after the Eestoration, accused him of
endeavouring to influence Monk against the King.
Apart from his own express denial, such a charge
refutes itself, as inconsistent with all Baxter's con-
victions and his prejudices. He confessed, indeed, to
Lauderdale, whom he met on his first reaching Lon-
don, and "who was just then released from his tedious
confinement in Windsor Castle," that he had scruples
about his "obligations to Eichard Cromwell," but
these scruples were removed by the course of events,
and every feeling and sympathy of Baxter induced
him to royalism. He himself explains his interview
with Monk. It was more creditable to his simplicity
and enthusiasm than to his penetration. He went to
request him that "he would take care that debauchery
and contempt of religion might not be let loose upon
any man's pretence of being for the King, as it already
began with some to be." To all such fears there was,
BAXTER. 347
iu tlie mean time, a ready assurance. Charles showered
his proclamations from Breda announcing liberty of
conscience,* and denouncing " debauchery and pro-
faneness in those who called themselves the King's
party." The royal condescension was unbounded at
the moment. The nation reciprocated the confidence
which Charles invited. Men who remembered the
perfidy of the father might urge caution towards the
son ; but the current of loyalty had set in too strongly
to be resisted. The most flattering letters as to
Charles's devotion to the Protestant religion were re-
ceived from Protestant clergymen in France. "Sir
Eobert Murray and the Countess of Balcarras " inte-
rested themselves in procuring such letters, and they
came in profusion from Daill^ and Drehncourt and
Eaimond Caches. From the latter, "a famous pious
preacher at Charenton," Baxter himself received a pom-
pous character of the King, certifying to his regular
attendance on the Protestant worship, even in "places
where it seemed prejudicial to his affairs."
There was everywhere throughout the country an
outbreak of loyal enthusiasm. The nation was wild
with delight; the city bells were rung joyously; bon-
fires blazed in every street; and the health of the
King was drunk amidst uproarious gladness.-|- Wliilst
all this enthusiasm was at its height, the Convention
Parliament met and decreed that the King should be
sent for. The popular joy seems scarcely to have
extended to the Parliament, for "they presently ap-
* In his famous declaration, dated Breda, April 4, 1660, Charles pro-
claimed "liberty to tender consciences, and that no man shall be dis-
quieted or called in question for differences of opinion which do not
disturb the peace of the kingdom."
+ See Aubrey's description, MiscelL, vol. ii.
348 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
pointed a day of fasting and prayer;" and on this
occasion Baxter was selected, along with Dr Calamy
and Dr Ganden, to " preach and pray with them at
St Margaret's, Westminster." This is enough to
show the complexion of "the Convention" Parliament.
Loyal, it was yet Puritan and Presbyterian; the ca-
valiers had been returned in considerable numbers,
but the Presbjrterians still formed the clear majority;
and Baxter was now in his element exhorting them.
" In that sermon," he says, " I uttered some passages
which were matter of some discourse. Speaking of
our differences, I told them that whether we should
be loyal to our King was none of our differences. In
that we were all agreed: it being as impossible that
a man should be true to the Protestant principles and
not be loyal, as it was impossible to be true to the
Papist principles and to be loyal. And for the con-
cord now wished in matters of Church Government, I
told them it was easy for moderate men to come to a
fair agreement, and that the late Eeverend Primate of
Ireland (Usher), and myself, had agreed in half an
liourr
It was a brief return of Presbyterian power after
long neglect, and Baxter rejoiced in it ; the Indepen-
dents and Dr Owen had retired out of sight. Milton
was mourning in blindness and solitude the infatua-
tion of his countrymen. Calamy, Manton, Eeynolds,
Bowles, and " divers others," along with Baxter, were
the men of the hour. They had it all their own way ;
and, amidst prayer and praises, they hailed the restora-
tion of Charles Stuart. Certain of them went to Breda
to accompany him ; and, as he passed through the city
towards Westminster, " the London ministers in their
places attended him with acclamation, and, by the
BAXTER. 349
hands of old Mr Arthur Jackson, presented him with
a richly adorned Bible, which he received, and told
them it should be the rule of his actions."'
It is impossible to contemplate the conduct of the
Presbyterian clergy at this time without very mixed
feelings. Pity, and even contempt, mingles with our
respect for them. The readiness with which they re-
ceived Charles's protestations, the facility with which
they allowed themselves to be duped by them, * and
yet their honest desire to have the nation settled,
and the simplicity with which they negotiated with
Charles and Clarendon, excite this conflict of senti-
ment. It must be admitted that they showed them-
selves but poor interpreters of the national mind, or of
the Pioyal character. In the great crisis in which they
and the country stood, it required men of profound
policy and far-seeing tactics to uphold the interests
which they represented ; they were men merely of
sober views and of honest intentions.
Wlien we understand the character of Charles and
his advisers on the one side, and of the Presbyterian
clergy on the other, it is not difficult to read the mean-
ing of the tangled and unhappy negotiations which
foUow^ed. Charles himself had no serious feelings on
the subject of religion ; he would gladly enough have
given way to some modifications of the old Prelatical
and Ritual system, if it would have procured him
freedom from trouble. He seems even to have had a
sort of liking and a feeling of gratitude towards the
clergy, who interested themselves in his restoration.
* There is something revolting and yet ludicrous in the story of Charles
causing the Presbyterian clergy who visited him at Bi-eda to be placed
" within" hearing of his (pretended) secret devotions. The baseness of
the thing is scarcely more incredible than the simplicity of the clergy.
350 ENGLISH rUEITANISM AND ITS LEADEKS.
Baxter's rough honesty and forwardness of speech
whetted his careless humour.* But he had no sense
of honour ; " the word of a Christian King," which he
had solemnly pledged at Breda, had no meaning in his
mouth ; the thought of his engagements never troubled
him for a moment ; and consequently, when the na-
tional feeling, with the assembling of the next Parlia-
ment, carried the reaction in favour of arbitrary autho-
rity and the old Anglicanism beyond his own hopes, he
naturally fell in with it, and abandoned all attempts
at holding a fair balance between the Presbyterian and
ultra-Episcopalian parties. The Presbyterians, at the
same time, had greatly over-estimated their own posi-
tion and strength in the country ; and beyond their own
modified schemes of church government and ritual
they had no comprehensive policy. They were superior
in learning, in earnestness, and moderation, to the
bishops who opposed them. Baxter and Calamy, and
Manton and Bates, were men of a higher standard, both
of intellect and character, than Morley and Sheldon,
and Gauden and Sparrow ; but their views were scarcely
wider, and in principle not less intolerant. They
fought for a church theory scarcely less narrow than
that of their opponents, while they failed to recognise
that their theory no longer represented any national
sentiment. The public mind had ceased to interest
itself in Presbyterianism. It remained a respectable
tradition, but it was no longer a living power. It no
longer moved the people. They had gone off into more
extreme sects, or, with the dominant impulse of the
* In an interview which Baxter had with Charles, October 22, he tells
us that he expressed a fear that his plain speeches might be displeasing
to the King, who replied that he was " not offended at the plainness,
freedom, or earnestness of them, and that for my free si^eech he took me
to be the honester man."
BAXTER. 351
hour, they had returned to swell to its brimming height
the resurging tide of Eoyalist Anglicanism. It became
very soon apparent that the Presbyterian clergy who
had played so prominent a part in the King's restora-
tion, were destined to have no weight on the national
comisels, and no influence in moulding a new ecclesi-
astical constitution.
It was necessary, however, for Charles and his ad-
visers to mediate for some time. So long as the Con-
vention Parliament sat, the interests of Presbyterianism
could not be overlooked. The clergy who had sur-
rounded Charles on his return to Westminster, were its
guides and authorities ; and an influence which seemed
backed by such a national representation demanded
conciliatory and careful treatment. Several of the
Presbyterian clergy were accordingly selected to be
royal chaplains. Baxter was among the number, and
along with Eeynolds, and Calamy, and Spurstow, once
preached before his Majesty. Lord Broghill, after-
wards Earl of Orrery, and the Earl of Manchester, were
chiefly active in these proceedings. They were botli
men of the early Presbyterian party, and the former as
well as the latter had taken part in the civil wars on
the Parliamentary side ; but the ascendancy of Crom-
well and the Independents had driven them into retire-
ment, until they came forward to give their prominent
assistance on the eve of the Piestoration.
Through the intervention of these noblemen, a con-
ference was arranged between the King and the Pres-
byterian clergy. The Lord Chancellor Clarendon was
of course present at the conference ; and, so far as we
can judge from his own account, Baxter was the chief
speaker on behalf of the clergy. The great aim of his
address was, according to a favourite view of his own,
352 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
to convince the King of the difference between the
" sober-minded x^eople" (himself and the Presbyterians
generally), " who were contented with an interest in
heaven, and the liberty and advantages of the gospel
to promote it," and the " turbulent fanatic persons in
his dominions." He urged the possibility of a union
between the Presbyterians and Episcopalians — "of
what advantage such a union would be to his Majesty,
to the people, and to the bishops themselves — and how
easily it might be procured, by making only things
'necessary to be' the terms of union — by the true
exercise of Church discipline against sin — and by not
casting out the faithful ministers that must exercise it,
and obtruding unworthy men upon the people." The
audience ended in a " gracious answer," and in such
further assurances of royal interest, and earnest desires
to draw parties together, that an old Puritan minister,
Mr Ash, "burst out into tears of joy, and could not
forbear expressing what gladness the promises of his
Majesty had put into his heart."
It is needless to discuss whether Charles was sincere
now or not. The idea is inapplicable to such a character.
In so far as he cared neither in the abstract for Epis-
copacy nor Presbytery, he may be pronounced sincere
in wishing that they would be reconciled, and let him
alone ; but in so far as he really used no efforts to
carry out his promises, but gladly abandoned the Pres-
byterians so soon as the spirit of a new Parliament
permitted him to do so, his want of truth here, as
everywhere, was conspicuous. " Either at this time or
shortly after," the Presbyterian clergy were requested
to draw out a statement of their proposals as to Church
government. The King professed a wish to deal with
a few representatives of either party rather than to
BAXTER. 353
make any general appeal to the body of the clergy.
The latter process, which Baxter and others urged, he
well said, " would be too tedious and make too much
noise. " He promised to make the Episcopalians, on their
side, draw out a paper of "concessions," so that seeing
both together it might be apparent what probability
of success awaited the negotiation. The Presbyterian
clergy accordingly "appointed to meet from day to
day" at Sion College, and in " about three weeks' time"
they were ready with a paper of proposals which they
agreed to submit to the King, along with Archbishop
Usher's form of government, called his Eeduction. Mr
Calamy and Dr Eeynolds were the chief authors of
the proposals ; " Dr Worth and Dr Eeynolds drew up
what was against the ceremonies : the abstract which
was laid before the King I," says Baxter, " drew up."
In so far, the leaders of the Presbyterian clergy
acted with great wisdom. Their adoption of Arch-
bishop Usher's model as the basis of Church govern-
ment showed a singular spirit of moderation. Their
tolerance of a liturgy, while requiring the amendment
of several parts of the Book of Common Prayer and
objecting to its rigorous enforcement, was no less com-
mendable. That they should, while making these
concessions, have recurred to their old complaints as
to the surplice, the sign of the cross in baptism, bow-
ing at the name of Jesus, and kneeling at the altar,
was only what might have been expected. The very
extent of the concessions they made in the general
mode of Church government and worship would only
lead them to cling more tenaciously than ever to those
accidents which their long struggle had invested with
a deeper importance than ever. Had the heads of the
Episcopalian party been actuated by the same honest
z
354 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
motives as the Presbyterian leaders, it seems as if
tlie divisions wliicli had so long rent the Church
of Enoiand might now have been healed. It seems
so, because in point of fact the wisest men on either
side were not far from one another. Baxter and
Usher had agreed in half an hour, as the former had
told the Convention Parliament in the sermon he
preached before them. Pteynolds, who drew up the
paper at Sion College against the ceremonies, after-
wards became a bishop. Calamy apparently would
have accepted the offer also made to him if he could
have done so consistently with his former opinions
and the sympathy of his friends. Baxter's scrupulous
temper, more than his principles, prevented him from
accepting a similar offer. Yet here, as everywhere
throughout this varying struggle, it may be doubted
whether there were not fundamental oppositions be-
tween the parties as a whole that precluded all idea
of hearty and happy union. It was not any broad
difference of dogmatic principle, but it was a difference
of feeling, of sympathy, of aim — a difference in the
mode of religious thought and the very idea of Chris-
tian worship. The literature of the times shows this
in a striking manner. The Puritans, with all their
deep devotional fervency, had become accustomed to
models of worship altogether unlike the old Catholic
forms. Baxter's Reformed Liturgy, and the circum-
stances in which it was written, ]3roves this memorably.
It is difficult to suppose that those who looked upon
the Book of Common Prayer with an affectionate and
admiring zeal, which persecution had only deepened,
could have cordially united with those who regarded
Baxter's Liturgy as an appropriate or tasteful expres-
sion of devotional feeling. In passing from the one
BAXTEK. 355
to tlie other we enter, beyond doubt, into a changed
atmosphere : we leave the calm, tranquil, and hoary-
sanctities — dim in their antique reserve — of the Ca-
tholic past, for the heated, lengthy, and obtrusive
utterances of a comparatively modern dogmatism.
But whatever may have been the wish or indiffer-
ence of the King, or the inclination of the Presby-
terians, it must be admitted that the Episcopalian
leaders never meant to enter into any compromise.
Accordingly, while the former had been debating
their concessions at Sion College, the latter had been
doing nothing. " When we went with our pa]3ers to
the King," says Baxter, " and expected there to meet
the divines of the other party, according to promise,
with their proposals, also containing the lowest terms
which they would yield to for peace, we saw not a man
of them, nor any papers from them of that nature — no,
not to this day." The King, however, received their
papers, and expressed himself pleased that they were
" for a liturgy, and had yielded to the essence of Epis-
copacy." It was also announced to them shortly after-
wards that the royal intentions as to religion would be
made known in the form of a declaration, " to which
they would be at liberty to furnish their exceptions."
This declaration appeared on the 4th of September
1660. It renewed the King's assurances of liberty of
conscience given at Breda, commended the conduct of
the Presbyterian ministers who had there waited upon
him, and held out the prospect of a meeting to revise
the liturgy. Baxter Avas greatly displeased with this
document when he saw it, and wrote a sharp and urgent
reply to it, which, however, he modified at the re-
quest of Calamy and Eeynolds. He had many inter-
views with the Lord Chancellor on the subject, and also
356 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
witli some of the bishops ; and after a second reply, or
"paper of alterations," had been substituted for the
first — which, even in its modified form, was "so un-
grateful" to the Chancellor that they were never called
upon to present it to the King — a formal interview be-
tween his Majesty and the representatives of both par-
ties was held at the " Lord Chancellor's house." The
chief point of discussion at this meeting regarded the
authority of the bishop, whether it should be with the
consent of the presbyters or not — Baxter and his friends,
of course, earnestly contending for this consent. The
wary Chancellor let the Presbyterians understand that
he had received petitions from the Independents and
Anabaptists, and he proposed thatthey and others should
be allowed to meet for " religious worship, so that they
did it not to the disturbance of the peace." The Pres-
byterians did not venture to repudiate this proposal,
but they gave it a very cold response. They dreaded
that the toleration would extend to Papists and Soci-
nians ; and " for our parts," said Baxter, " we could
not make their toleration our request." The result of
this meeting was so far good. The " declaration" was
issued in a new and revised form, in which it was
found that the consent of the presbyter was recognised.
Baxter was delighted when he first saw this change,
and " presently resolved to do his best to persuade all
to conform, according to the terms of the declaration."
His elation did not last long, and the breath of
suspicion seems to have haunted him even in the
moment of it. For it was only the next day that,
on being asked by the Lord Chancellor if he would
accept a bishopric, he hesitated till he should see
the matter of the declaration passed into a law.
Pteynolds, Calamy, and himself, "had some speeches
BAXTER. 357
together " on the subject, and they came to the con-
chision that there was nothing inconsistent with their
principles in the acceptance of a bishopric ; " but all
the doubt was whether the declaration would be made
law as we then expected, or whether it were but a
temporary means to draw us on till we came up to
all the Diocesans desired." In the end, as has been
already stated, Eeynolds was the only one that ac-
cepted a bishopric. Baxter's letter to Clarendon, in
which he declined the proffered honour, is a touch-
ing and noble document, bright in every sentence
with his rare disinterestedness. We may regret his
scruples, but we must admire his simple-minded in-
difference to the world and its honours. When, in
the close of the letter, he says that, " for the sake of
that town of Kidderminster, he would gladly receive
the vicarage there, or, if this cannot be managed, that
he would willingly resume his old post of curate," his
self-sacrifice rises into pathos. A still higher spirit
of self-sacrifice, indeed, might have prompted him to
lay aside his personal scruples, and have extorted yet
more warmly our admiration — but it would not so
much have moved and interested our affections.
In the King's declaration it was announced that
the Liturgy should be revised and reformed; and Bax-
ter continued to urge the Chancellor to adopt the
means for carrying out this part of the royal inten-
tions. The result was the famous Savoy conference
in the spring of the following year (1661), which may
be said at once to have brought the negotiations to a
head, and to have shown the insincerity on the Epis-
copalian side, which had characterised them all along.
Twenty- four commissioners, with certain assistants,
were appointed to meet at the Savoy, the Bishop
358 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
of London's lodgings, and take into consideration the
subject of the Liturgy. The list comprises all the
well-known names who had hitherto taken the lead
in the negotiations, and the prospect of settlement
might have seemed a fair one. But before the com-
missioners had met, the election of a new Parlia-
ment, and the turn of public affairs, had emboldened
the Episcopalian party to a degree which entirely
destroyed any such prospect. Disinclined in them-
selves to yield anything, they now perceived that the
nation was prepared to support them in their most
extreme views. Parliament was prepared to outrun
even the zeal of the bishops ; and in such circum-
stances it was not likely that they would be more
ready than they had been to meet the Presbyterians
half way with concession. Accordingly the confer-
ence was nearly breaking down at the very com-
mencement on this point. As before — after the de-
liberations of the Presbyterians at Sion College — the
Prelates had no proposals to make — no concessions to
advance. The Bishop of London, as their spokesman,
opened the conference by saying that it was not they,
but the opposite party, that had been the " seekers of
the conference," and that they had nothing to say or
do till the Presbyterians had brought forward in writ-
ing what alterations they desired in the Liturgy. This
was an ingenious Prelatic device, and, to some extent,
served its purpose. Baxter, contrary to the advice of
all his brethren, as he confesses, concurred in the
statement of the Bishop of London ; and the issue
was, that he and others agreed to draw out a state-
ment of their exceptions to the Book of Common
Prayer, and of additions or new forms, such as would
meet their approval.
BAXTEK. 359
It was tlie latter part of the task that Baxter
undertook, and in the course of a fortnight he had
completed an entirely new liturgy, to which we have
already alluded. This was a fatal attempt. It was
impossible that by any plan Baxter and his friends
could more effectually have played into the hands
of their opponents. The rashness and self-confidence
betrayed in the very conception is enough to amaze
us. It served to startle even the most moderate
among the bishops, while it put the weapon of re-
sistance which they desired into the hands of those
who had made up their minds against all change.
The result was what might have been expected. It
was felt, even before the renewal of discussion, that
all hope of settlement was at an end. The paper
of exceptions, and a "fair copy of our reformed lit-
urgy," was handed to the bishops, but Baxter expresses
his doubts whether they were ever read by the " gene-
rality of them." The conference itself degenerated into
a series of disputations between some of the more
active and zealous of the bench, and our divine as the
chief spokesman of the other side. In this rivalry
of logic he found a lively interest, and acquitted
himself with distinction; but his cause suffered and
sank into contempt. Many of the bishops absented
themselves, and even some of the Presbyterians, among
whom was Lightfoot, followed their example. The
attendance dwindled to three or four of either party,
besides the chief combatants. Some spectators from
" the town " gathered to witness the intellectual com-
bat. Gunning — a clever and well-informed divine of
the Laudian school, " noted for a special subtlety of
arguing " — took the main share of the debate on the
part of the bishops. " The two men," says Burnet,
360 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
" were the most unfit to heal matters, and the fittest
to undo them, that could have been found out. . . .
They spent some days in much logical arguing, to the
diversion of the town, who thought here were a couple
of fencers engaged in disputes that could never be
brought to an end, or have any good effect."
The unfortunate issue of the Savoy conference pre-
pared the way for all the harsh and miserable legisla-
tion that followed. When men had begun to laugh at
the subject of dispute, the time of renewed intolerance
and persecution was not far distant. The character
of the Presbyterians, besides, had somewhat suffered
from the ill-fated meeting. Their moderation, at first
so commendable that it placed their opponents in a
predicament from which they could hardly escape, save
by yielding their claims, was rendered suspicious by
the idea of a new liturgy, and the general tenor of the
discussion. The effects were immediately apparent.
Baxter, who had lately refused a bishopric, now found
it impossible to obtain his modest settlement at Kid-
derminster as vicar, or even as curate. He details
at length his dealings in this matter with Claren-
don, and Morley, Bishop of Worcester, and Sir Ealph
Clare, " an old courtier," who seems to have been the
man of property and influence at Kidderminster, " the
ruler of the vicar, and all the business." The affair
throughout is painful and discreditable to all engaged
in it saving Baxter himself. It is perfectly obvious
that they had no wish to promote his request. Even
Clarendon, with all his professions, cannot be credited
with any honest wish to befriend him ; and he at
length had penetration enough to see this, however
his simplicity may have been at first beguiled. " For
a Lord Chancellor," he says, " that hath the business
BAXTER. 361
of the kingdom in liis hand, and lords attending him,
to take up his time so much and often about so low
a vicarage, or a curateship, when it is not in the
power of the Iving or the Lord Chancellor to procure
it, though they so vehemently desire it ! But, oh !
thought I, how much better do poor men live who
speak as they think, and do as they profess, and are
never put upon such shifts as these for their present
conveniences."
Unable to procure his desired settlement at Kidder-
minster, he settled in London, and became colleague
for some time to Dr Bates, at St Dunstan's-in-the-West,
where he preached once a-week. Here began the sys-
tem of molestation, from which he was scarcely ever
afterwards free. Spies waited upon his sermons, and
reported their subjects in high quarters,* with in-
sinuations of their seditious tendency. He is said to
have frightened and driven them away by his telling
exposures in a series subsequently pubhshed under
the title of '' The Formal Hypocrite Detected." The
crowds that thronged to his preaching were very
great. On one occasion, when preaching at St Law-
rence, Jewry, his famous sermon on " Making light
of Christ," Lord Broghill and the Earl of Suffolk,
" with whom he was to go in the coach," were "fain to
go home again," so great was the crowd ; while the
pastor of the church was glad to get up into the pulpit
with him, as the only place where he could find room.
On another occasion, at St Dunstan's, an alarm was
raised that the edifice was in danger. His calm
courage and lofty appeal to the "great noise of the
dissolving world" made a deep impression on the
* " I scarce tliink that ever I preached a sermon without a spy to give
them his report of it."
362 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
excited and rushing congregation, and succeeded in
quieting it.
Baxter continued liis preacliing till the passing of
the Act of Uniformity. Wliile the church of St Dun-
stan's was preparing, he preached at St Bride's, " at
the other end of Fleet Street," and also at Blackfriars,
and he held, besides, a week-day lecture in Milli Street,
at the request of Mr Ashurst, "with about twenty citi-
zens." He was willing, in however humble a capacity,
to serve the Church. His scrupulous disinterestedness
would not allow him to receive any remuneration, ex-
cept for his lectures in Milk Street, for which, he says,
" they allowed me forty pounds per annum till we were
all silenced."
This issue was fast approaching. The Parliament
of 1661 was keen to hurry matters to a crisis. It
began its career by requiring every member to take
the sacrament after the old manner, and by ordering
the Covenant to be burned. The power of the sword
was declared to belong inalienably to the sovereign,
and all members of corporations were bound to testify
that resistance was unlawful. While busy in this
work of reactionary legislation, the insurrection of
the Fifth-monarchy men, under Venner, took place.
Everything seemed designed to carry the tide of reac-
tion to the highest. This insane attempt served as a
justification for the proposal of the most extreme
measures against all parties disaffected in any degree
towards the Church. The Act of Uniformity was
passed in May. By this Act every minister was bound,
before the feast of St Bartholomew, in the ensuing
August, to declare his assent to everything contained in
the Prayer-book, under penalty of forfeiting his bene-
fice. Baxter did not even wait for the expiry of the
BAXTER. 363
probationary period, but immediately gave up preach-
ing. " The last sermon I preached," he says, " was on
May 25." His reasons were that he considered him-
self to be included under a doubtful clause of the Act,
which was supposed to termmate the liberty of lecturers
at that time, and that he wished that his nonconfor-
mity might act as an example to others who might
have hesitated.
St Bartholomew's day, the 2-ith of August 3662,
marks a great epoch in the religious history of England.
Puritanism henceforth merges into Nonconformity. The
ejection of two thousand of the most pious and excel-
lent ministers of the Church carried the struggle which
had been so long waged within it into a different sphere,
and imparted to it a new character. During two years
Baxter had been one of the most prominent men in
the country. In the last efforts of Puritanism to main-
tain its ground within the ecclesiastical order of the
country, he had been its conspicuous representative.
With the Act of Uniformity he withdrew into private
life, and for ten years is scarcely heard of, save as one
of many victims of the miserable persecutions of the
period, which pursued him to his most retired privacy.
Strangely enough, he commenced this period of his
life by an act which he had hitherto looked upon as
scarcely permissible in the case of a clergyman — he
got married. His wife's name was Margaret Charlton.
She was young and well-born : he was not old,* but
his health had never been good, and his circumstances
were sufficiently gloomy. There is not much wonder.
* Her age is stated to have been twenty-two or twenty-three, while
Baxter was in his forty-seventli year. She belonged, according- to his
own statement, to " one of the chief families in the county" (Worcester-
shire).
364 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
therefore, that the marriage excited great astonishment,
according to his own confession. "The king's mar-
riage was scarcely more talked of" It proved, how-
ever, in every respect a happy union. Mrs Baxter
was not merely a pious and excellent help-mate to
her husband, but a noble-hearted and heroic woman,
who shared and lightened his imprisonment. She
died before him, and he embalmed her memory in
what he called a " Breviate of her life."
After his marriage he retired to Acton, where he
followed his studies " privately in quietness." He at-
tended the parish church in the forenoon, and in the
afternoon preached in his own house to a few friends
and "poor neighbours," who assembled with his family.
JSTow and then he spent a day in London. The works
on which he was engaged were his chief interest. He
completed here his Christian Directory, or Sum of
Practical Divinity, and also some of his well-known
shorter works, his Life of Faith, his 8aint or Brute,
Row or Never, and The Divine Life. One day as he
was preaching " in a private house," a bullet was fired
in at the window, passed by him, and narrowly missed
the head of his sister-in-law.
During these years that Baxter passed at Acton, the
course of public events was marked by a series of start-
ling vicissitudes. In 1663 there was renewed talk of
a comprehension, in which he bore his part, but which
ended as before in nothing. The King had passed in
December of the preceding year an indulgence, includ-
ing Papists ; but Parliament had remonstrated, and
followed up their remonstrance by the Conventicle
Act (1663), which prohibited attendance on any wor-
ship but that of the Church of England, under the
severest penalties — three months' imprisonment for
BAXTER. 365
tlie first offence, five for the second, and seven years'
transportation for the third, on conviction before a
single Justice of Peace. In the close of 1665 the
plague broke out in London, when, Baxter says, " most
of the conformable ministers fled and left their flocks
in the time of their extremity," and the ejected Noncon-
formists preached in the forsaken churches and minis-
tered to the sick and dying. Yet during this very
time — when the Parliament, in dread of the visitation
which had laid waste London, had taken refuge at
Oxford — Sheldon and Clarendon busied themselves in
riveting the chains of Nonconformity by the infa-
mous Five Mile Act, which prescribed that all who
refused to swear that it was unlawful, on any pretence
whatever, to take up arms against the King, should be
banished five miles from any corporate town or burgh
sending members to Parliament.
The fall of Clarendon in 1667, and the rise of the
Duke of Buckingham, brought some remission from
these bitter exactions ; but the strain of intolerance
was only temporarily relaxed. Through various alter-
nations,— -renewed proposals for comprehensions by
Lord Keeper Bridgman — a renewed royal indulgence
in 1672 — and yet further proposals for accommoda-
tion, in which Tillotson and Stillingfleet took a part,
with Manton, Bates, and Baxter on the side of the
Nonconformists, — the ecclesiastical liistory of the reign
preserved the same disgraceful character, only equalled
by its court disasters and military dishonour. The
national life and reputation sank gradually to a lower
ebb; while the bishops, with an obstinacy equally
mean and wicked, still stood in the way of any com-
promise, and delighted to stretch forth the hand of
persecution.
366 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
Baxter appears to have lived in studio^^s quietness
at Acton till about 1670. The venerable Sir INIatthew
Hale was his neighbour, and a very pleasant neigh-
bour, with whom he had frequent conferences, " mostly
about the immortality of the soul and other philoso-
phical and foundation points, which were so edify-
ing that his very questions and objections did help
me to more light than other men's solutions." He
greatly commends Hale's piety, moderation, and cour-
tesy. " When the people crowded in and out of my
house to hear, he openly showed me great respect be-
fore them at the door, and never spoke a word against
it. He was a great lamenter of the extremities of the
times, and of the violence and foolishness of the pre-
dominant clergy ; and a great desirer of such abate-
ments as might restore us all to serviceableness and
unity." His quiet life of study, and his philosophical
discussions with Sir Matthew Hale, were suddenly in-
terrupted by a warrant smnmoning him before the
justices at Brentford. He was accused of holding a
conventicle, and of not having taken the Oxford oath.
After being subjected to great rudeness, and scarcely
permitted to speak in his own defence, he was com-
mitted to Clerkenwell Prison. Here, however, his
imprisonment was "nogTeat suffering," for "I had,"
he says, "an honest jailer, who showed me all the
kindness he coidd. I had a large room and the liberty
of walking in a fair garden. My wife was never so
cheerful a companion to me as in prison." He was
liberated at length by a habeas corpus, some flaw hav-
ing been found in his mittuuus. This the judge, in
dismissing him, took care to point out. The law was
against conventicles, he was reminded, and " it was only
upon the eri'or of the warrant that he was released."
BAXTER. 367
In order to escape further molestation he returned
to Totteridge, near Barnet. He was afraid " they might
amend their mittimus " and lay him up again, and
this drove him from Middlesex and his pleasant house
at Acton. His present residence was far from com-
fortable. He had only "a few mean rooms, which
were extremely smoky, and the place withal so cold "
that he spent the winter in great pain, troubled by " a
sore sciatica, and seldom free from much anguish."
Amidst all his discomfort, however, he never inter-
mitted his studies. His great Latin System of Divinity
— his Mctliodus Thcologim — was now begun. Here
also he wrote his Aijology for the Nonconformists, and
entered into a long discussion with Owen about the
old ever-recurring subject of the terms of union among
Christians. It was at this time, too, that he had a cor-
respondence with the Earl of Lauderdale, with whom he
had formerly some dealings on the eve of the Eestora-
tion. Lauderdale either had a really kindly interest
in Baxter, or he craftily acted at the suggestion of
others, with the view of removing him to scenes where
his influence would be less troublesome. He offered to
take him with him to Scotland, and to make him either
a Bishop there or a Principal of one of the Colleges.
But Baxter pleaded his age and infirmities, and his
engagement in the composition of his Mcthodus,
which, if he lived to finish it, "was almost all the
service he expected to do to God and His Church more
in the world." Hard as was his lot in England, he
was evidently not disposed to commit himself to the
tender mercies of Lauderdale in Scotland.
After the King's " dispensing declaration" in 1672,
he removed to London, and resumed, after an interval of
ten years, public preaching. " The 1 9th of November
368 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
(1672), my baptism day, was tlie first day," he says,
" after ten years' silence, that I preached in a tolerated
public assembly." From this time on to 1682, or
another space of ten years, he continued to preach
under varying circumstances of difficulty and per-
secution. It is not necessary to trace his successive
changes during these mournful and unhappy years —
now encouraged by the capricious indulgence of the
royal declaration — and now threatened by the restrain-
ing vigilance of Parliament. Driven from one place of
worship to another — from St James's Market House to
Oxendon Chapel, which the liberality of his friends
built for him — from Oxendon Chapel to one in the
parish of St Martin, then to Swallow Street, and finally
to New Street, — he was hunted by informers, and
worried by persecutors, wherever he went. " I was
so long wearied," he says, " with keeping my doors
shut against them that came to distrain my goods for
preaching, that I was fain to go from my house, and to
sell all my goods, and to hide my library first, and
afterwards to sell it : so that if books had been my
treasure (and I valued little more on earth), I had
now been without a treasure. For about twelve years
I was driven a hundred miles from them ; and after I
had paid dear for the carriage, after two or three years
I was forced to sell them." Two warrants for his
apprehension were issued during this period ; and on
one occasion constables and beadles, for twenty -four
Sundays, watched his chapel door in Swallow Street
to seize hmi.
On the 24th of August 1682 he preached in New
Street. "I took that day," he says, "my leave of the
pulpit and public work in a thankful congregation."
He had been in the country to recruit liis health, and
BAXTER. 369
returned in great weakness. " When I had ceased
preaching," he says, " and was newly risen from ex-
tremity of pain, I was suddenly surprised by a poor
violent informer, and many constables and officers
who rushed in, apprehended me, and served on me
one warrant to seize my person for coming within five
miles of a corporation, and five more warrants to dis-
train for a hundred and ninety pounds for five ser-
mons." He was " contentedly" proceeding to jail
when a medical friend, Dr Thomas Cox, meeting him,
forced him to return to his "couch and bed," giving
at the same time his oath before five justices that he
could not be removed to prison " without danger of
death." The King is represented as having been con-
sulted on the subject, and as having said, " Let him die
in his bed." It was determined, however, that his
supposed deathbed should be as bitter as possible.
" They executed all their warrants on my books and
goods, even the bed that I lay sick on, and sold them
all." And when he had borrowed some further bed-
ding and necessaries, they threatened to come again
and take all, so that he had no remedy but " to forsake
his house, and goods, and all, and to take secret lodg-
ings at a distance in a stranger's house." *
Baxter was destined, amidst all his weakness, to
survive this harsh and cowardly cruelty, and even worse
treatment than this. Again, in 1684, while he lay "in
pain and languishing," warrants were sent forth against
him. On his refusing to admit them, six officers were
set to watch at his " study door, who watched all
night, and kept me from my bed and food, so that the
next day I yielded to them, who carried me, scarce
able to stand, to the sessions, and bound me in four
* Penitent Confessions.
2 A
370 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
hundred pounds bond to my good behaviour." Ee-
peatedly he was subjected to the same infamous
harshness, and forced, in " all his pain and weakness,
to be carried to the sessions-house, or else forfeit his
bond." It is impossible to conceive oppression at
once more petty and intolerable — cruelty more un-
necessary and more tormenting.
In such acts of despotic weakness and cowardly
brutality the last years of the reign of Charles ap-
]3ropriately dragged themselves out. The prisons were
crowded with "aged ministers," the Courts of Justice
were grossly corrupted, thronged by a base and miser-
able crew of informers — the spawn of an age of lies
and imposture — and presided over by men without
principle or humanity. The Court, the Church, the
Universities were alike without credit or honour.
And while hundreds of the aged Puritan clergy
languished in j)rison, some of the best blood of Eng-
land was shed upon the scaffold. The same justice
which w^as outraged by the sufferings of Baxter turned
with averted eyes from the murder of PaisseU and
of Sidney.
With the death of Charles and the accession of
James, in February 1685, Baxter's troubles reached their
height. In the beginning of this year he had pub-
lished a Paraphrase on the New Testament, with notes,
in the course of which he was supposed to make
some disparaging reference to the bishops. The charge
was a mere pretence. The real aim w^as effectually
to silence by imprisonment one w^ho had so long
been a favourite object of resentment to the Church
and the Government. On the 28th of February he
was committed to the King's Bench Prison by war-
rant of Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys. He apphed
BAXTER. 371
for a haheas corpus, and by this means was enabled
to secure his liberty till his trial, which was fixed
to take place in May. The indictment, which is
a long Latin document, interspersed with quotations
from his Faraplirase, charged him with being a sedi-
tious and factious person, of depraved, impious, and
restless disposition, and with exciting others to hosti-
lity against the Church and the bishops. On the 18th
of May his counsel moved that, on account of his ill-
ness, some further time might be given him before his
trial. Jeffreys exclaimed, " I will not give him a
minute's time more, to save his life. We have had to
do with other sorts of persons, and now we have a saint
to deal with, and I know how to deal with saints as
well as sinners. Yonder," he roared, " stands Gates in
the pillory" — this infamous informer was at the time
expiating his offences in the New Palace Yard — " and
he says he suffers for the truth, and so says Baxter ;
but if Baxter did but stand on the other side of the
pillory with him, I would say two of the greatest
rogues and rascals of the kingdom stood there."
The trial occurred on the 80th of May. Baxter came
into court, attended by Sir Henry Ashurst, the son of
his old friend, Alderman Ashurst, who had been so
warm a patron of the Puritan clergy.'"' Sir Henry had
feed counsel to defend him, and PoUexfen opened the
case on his behalf As he proceeded, Jeffreys brutally
interrupted him. A question arose as to Baxter's sup-
posed application of the passage about the " long
prayers of the Pharisees," to the Liturgy. " Is he not
* " Among the Nonconformists he acted as a father and a counsellor,
while his pm-se was ever open to relieve their wants, and his house for
a refuge to them." To Baxter he was a peculiar friend—"' my most en-
tire friend," he says.
372 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
now an old knave to interpret this as belonging to
liturgies ? " " So do others," replied Pollexfen, " of the
Church of England, who would be loth so to wrong
the cause of liturgies as to make them a novel inven-
tion, or not to be able to date them as early as the
Scribes and Pharisees." " No, no, Mr Pollexfen," said
the judge ; " they were long-winded extempore prayers,
such as they (the Puritans) used to say when they
appropriated God to themselves : ' Lord, we are thy
people, thy peculiar people, thy dear people.'" "And
then, he snorted and squeaked through his nose, and
clenched his hands, and lifted up his eyes, mimicking
their manner, and running on furiously as he said they
used to pray." * " A\Tiy, my lord," said Pollexfen, with
grim irony, " some will think it is hard measure to
stop these men's mouths, and not let them speak
through their noses." " Pollexfen," cried Jeffreys, " I
know you well ; I will set a mark on you ; you are
the 23atron of the faction. This is an old rogue, who
has poisoned the world with his Kidderminster doc-
trine, ... an old schismatical knave ; a hypocritical
villain." He accused Baxter of encouraoinsj the late
civil war. Pollexfen appealed to the notorious fact that
his client, along with Mr Love and others, was always
well affected to the King and royal family ; and that at
the Restoration his services were rewarded by the offer
of a bishopric. But Jeffreys would listen to no reason.
" What ailed the old blockhead, the unthankful villain,
then," he replied, " that he would not conform? Hang
him, he hath cast more reproach upon the constitution
and discipline of our Church than will be wiped off this
hundred years ; but I'Jl handle him for it ; for by G —
he deserves to be whipped through the city."
* Baxta'a Life and Times. Okme, p. 454.
BAXTER. 373
In the same disgraceful manner the trial proceed-
ed. Jeffreys was drunk with the excitement of hate
and natural ferocity. The intensity of his passion is
at once ludicrous and revolting. When Baxter inter-
posed some remark in his defence, he cried out, " Rich-
ard, Eichard, dost thou think we'll hear thee poison
the court ? Eichard, thou art an old fellow ; an old
knave ; thou hast written books enough to load a cart,
every one as full of sedition — I might say treason — as
an egg is full of meat. Thou pretendest to be a
preacher of the gospel of peace, and thou hast one foot
in the grave ; it is time for thee to begin to think what
account thou intendest to give. But leave thee to thy-
self, and I see thon'lt go on as thou hast begun ; but,
by the grace of God, I'll look after thee. . . . Come,
what do you say for yourself, you old knave ? come,
speak up. AVhat doth he say? I am not afraid of
you for all the snivelling calves you have got about
you" — alluding to some persons who were in tears
about Baxter. " Your lordship need not," calmly re-
plied the aged divine ; " for I'll not hurt you."
There have been many such trials of " cruel mock-
ings ; " but few present a more shameful and humili-
ating spectacle than that of Baxter. Justice has been
in other cases as grossly outraged, but it has seldom
or never been exhibited in an aspect at once more
hideous and contemptible. The trial ended, of course,
in conviction. As the jury retired, Baxter ventured to
say, " Does your lordship think any jury will pretend
to pass a verdict upon me npon such a trial?" "I'll
warrant you, Mr Baxter," said Jeffreys, rejoicing in his
savage coarseness to the last ; " don't you trouble your-
self about that." He was fined five hundred merks,
and sentenced to lie in prison till he paid it. Jeffreys
374 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
is understood to have suggested a severer sentence —
the base indignity of corporal punishment ; but to this
his colleagues refused to assent. Baxter was unable to
pay the fine, or probably declined to do it ; aware that
his liberty would be soon again threatened by some
equally unjust attack. He lay in prison for nearly two
years. At length, at the instance, it is supposed, of
Lord Powis, he was discharged, and went to live in
Chesterhouse Square, near the meeting-house of Syl-
vester, a Nonconformist friend and minister.
Here he spent in peace and liberty his remaining
years. Weak and dying as he had seemed to be for
long, he survived the Kevolution, and was able even
to take some part in the public measures then devised
for the protection of the dissenting clergy. "Wlien all
schemes of comprehension had again failed through
the obstinacy of Parliament, an Act of Toleration was
passed, by which the Nonconformists were brought
under the full protection of the law, on subscribing cer-
tain of the Thirtj'-nine Articles, and taking the oaths
to Government. Baxter availed himself of this act, and
incited his Nonconforming brethren to do so, in a char-
acteristic manner. He drew up a lengthened paper,
setting forth the sense of the articles, as he understood
and was willing to subscribe them. His criticisms
and expositions in many cases show his singularly ex-
ceptive and over-curious logic. It would be difficult
to say that he has made any point more clear by his
distinctions, but he satisfied himself ; and no fewer
than eighty dissenting clergy, in London and the neigh-
bourhood, joined with him in his explanations, and
subscribed the required articles. This fact testifies to the
extent of his influence, even at this time, when he had
retired from public life.
BAXTER. 375
Feeble and old as he was getting, his pen rested
not. To this period belongs his elaborate work on The
True History of Councils Enlarged and Defended, his
Dying ThougMs, and many other works, controver-
sial and practical. He resumed preaching, so far as
his health permitted. On the Sunday mornings he
took the place of his friend Sylvester, and he held
a meeting also every alternate Thursday morning.
He continued thus to preach for four years and a
half, when he was disabled " from going forth any
more to his ministerial work. So that what he did
all the residue of his life was in liis own hired
house, where he opened his doors morning and even-
ing every day."
Thus laboured Baxter unresting to the end. At last
his " growing distemper and infirmities" confined him,
first to his chamber and then to his bed. But even
from his deathbed he may be said to have preached to
the friends who came to see him. " You come hither
to learn to die," he said : " I am not the only person,
that must go this way. I can assure you that your
whole life, be it ever so long, is little enough to pre-
pare for death." * He was very humble and resigned.
In the midst of his sharp sufferings, he would say
— "It is not for me to prescribe — when Thou wilt,
what Thou wilt, how Thou wilt." Again — " I have
pain, but I have peace, I have peace." At length, on
the evening before his death, his sufferings became
almost intolerable. He cried out in great agony, till,
somewhat relieved, he was heard softly to murmur
" Death, death.",. Early on the morning of Tuesday,
December 8, 1691, he expired.
* Bates. — This old friend, who preached his funeral sermon, has pre-
served a minute account of his last sickness and death.
376 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
Baxter appears before ns in sucli various attitudes,
that it would require a very extended criticism to
estimate in full liis labours, writings, character, and
influence. As a writer alone, his works would fur-
nish matter for long analysis and comment. What are
called his " practical works " fill by themselves four
folio volumes, of about a thousand double-columned
pages each ; and these, of course, do not comprise his
great doctrinal treatises, and many of his controversial,
biographical, and historical writings. His two sys-
tematic treatises on divinity, the one in English and
the other in Latin, under the respective names of
Catholic Theology, and Mdhodus Theologicc Christiancc,
extend, the one to TOO and the other to 900 folio pages.
His age, it has been said, was " one of voluminous
authorship, and Baxter was beyond comparison the
most voluminous of all his contemporaries." Some
impression of this voluminousness may perhaps be
gathered from a comparative statement of the same
writer * who has made this remark : — " The works of
Bishop Hall," he says, " amount to ten volumes octavo.
Lightfoot's extend to thirteen ; Jeremy Taylor's to
fifteen ; Dr Goodwin's would make about twenty ; Dr
Owen's extend to twenty-eight ; Richard Baxter's, if
printed in a uniform edition, could not be compressed
in less than sixty volumes, making more than from
thirty to forty thousand closely-printed pages ! "
It would be a weary, and it would not be a profit-
able task, to enter upon any examination of such a
mass of wellnigh forgotten theological literature. It
would, at any rate, be beside our puq)ose in these
pages. We shall not even attempt any special criti-
cism of Baxter's theological opinions. They were a
* Orme, Baxter's Life and Writings, vol. ii. p. iQQ.
BAXTER. 377
subject of endless dispute in his own day, and long
after lie had sunk to a quiet grave. They touched
distinctions, many of which have lost all vitality of
meaning, and would be scarcely intelligible at present.
To try to revive them would interest none but the
theological reader, and would not, in liis case, serve
any good end. It will be more useful, as well as
more consonant with our aim, to endeavour to char-
acterise Baxter's general mode of thought, as repre-
sentative of that of his time, and of the mass of
theological literature which constituted one of the chief
manifestations of Puritanism. Differing as Baxter
did from Owen and others ; involved as he was in
constant controversy with the extreme Calvinists of
his generation ; and disposed as some would be to
deny to him the name of a Calvinist altogether, — there
is yet no divine of his age bears, in deeper and broader
impress, the spirit of its religious and theological be-
lief. He rose above a mere formal Calvinism ; but
the very processes of reasoning, and peculiarities of
intellectual apprehension, by which he did so, were
Calvinistic. He waged a ceaseless fight with the
Sectarian exaggerations, both of doctrine and eccle-
siastical practice, that surrounded him ; but the wea-
pons by which he did so were the very same which
had cut out for the sects a more lawless and indepen-
dent way on the great high-road of Protestantism.
Certainly, of all the men who express and represent
the spiritual thought of the Puritan age, none does so
more completely, and to the very centre of his intel-
ligence, than Ptichard Baxter.
It was a chief characteristic of this thought, as we
have already seen, to bring within the sphere of clear
and coherent argument — in other words, of a compre-
378 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
hensible and didactic scheme, logically related in all
its parts — the various subjects of the Christian revela-
tion, and the various phenomena of the spiritual life.
It systematised religion, both in its intellectual and
practical relations, to a degree scarcely inferior to that
of the old scholastic and media3val systems. Christian
doctrine was to it a vast body of argued knowledge,
and the Christian life a great " directory of conduct."
Baxter was prominently possessed by both these
ideas. They are to be found in all his writings ;
while he has left, in his Methodus Theologicc on the
one hand, and his Christian Directory on the other,
his own extended solution of the range of questions,
both doctrinal and practical, which concerns the
Christian.
Of all the divines of his time, none was more bold
and deductive. None carried argument with a more
daring and confident hand into the last recesses of
the Christian mysteries. Others, such as Owen,
were more formally and consistently logical. They
exhibited a more constructive and vigorous power of
thought. But Baxter possessed an inquisitorial and
freely-ranging logic, that out-argued all his contempo-
raries. His restless acuteness impelled him with an
unshrinking force on all the great problems of Chris-
tian theology, while his self-confident subtlety made
him believe that he had explamed them by processes
of hypothetical argumentation of the most complicated,
and sometimes of the most imaginary, character. His
principle of trichotomy, laid down in his Methodus,
and his views of sufficient grace and of election, are
conspicuous examples of this.
The principle of a "divine trinity or unity" ap-
peared to him to be imprinted on the " whole frame of
BAXTER. 379
nature and morality," and to fiirnisli tlie only key to a
"true method in theology." What Monadism was to
Leibnitz, as it has been said, Triadism was to Baxter.
It was the "just distribution" into which all natural
and all divine science fell. He saw a threefold unity
everywhere ; in the relations of the godhead — in the
spiritual constitution of man — in the method of salva-
tion— in the fruit and grace of it. Father, Word, and
Spirit — life, intellect, and will — nature, grace, and
glory — Governor, Saviour, Sanctifier — faith, hope,
charity, — such are some of the trinal distinctions
which seem to him to underlie all knowledge, and
especially all Christian knowledge. Such divisions
he esteemed a "juster methodising of Christian veri-
ties according to the matter and Scripture than is
yet extant." JSTothing can better show the peculiari-
ties of Baxter's mental temperament, as developed and
sharpened in the theological atmosphere of his time.
Such a conception may be considered more an ex-
travagant than a fair representation of the Puritan
mode of thought ; but it only brings out, on this
account, more prominently its characteristic tendency.
Its author had exactly that measure of originality
and independence which enabled him to present in
relief the peculiarities of a prevailing system. Owen
would never have yielded to the temptation of such
a speculation ; it would have seemed to him a law-
less intrusion of human ingenuity into the great pro-
vince of Christian faith ; yet it was the very same
dominance of logical argumentation, the same rage for
systematising within this province, which governed his
own less fanciful and more constructive reasonings on
the mystery of the Atonement. The method of both
was the same — only the one used it with a more sober
380 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
consistency and regard to the tenor of the Calvinistic
tradition than the other.
The same peculiarity marks all Baxter's distinctive
views. They are modifications of Calvinism; but
they are, at the same time, strongly characterised by
its hyperlogical scholastic tendency. It was, for ex-
ample, one of the chief problems in the Genevan
system of doctrine from the beginning, how to recon-
cile the free invitation of the Gospel to all, with the
special gift of grace to some. The will of God as
loving, and desiring the salvation of, all, seemed to
come into painful conflict with the same will as only
efl&cacious in the salvation of some. The spirit of
modern theological inquiry, with its comparative dis-
regard of system, is content to acknowledge here a
profound mystery, which it does not seek to resolve.
It accepts without any qualification, as an express
dictate of Scripture, the reality of God's loving will
to all men, while it leaves the mystery of opposition
to this will to rest simply on the fact of the corre-
sponding reality of a human will, which, in virtue of
its very character — because it is a true will — may
oppose itself to the Divine. Such a simple appeal to
fact, however, was not in the spirit of the old theoretic
divinity. It insisted on compassing the perplexing
dilemma by some argumentative solution, and this,
too, on the divine side. The mystery of the divine
action must be resolved ; and if so, it is clear that it
only admitted logically of one solution. The call of
the Gospel is in name, and, according to some hypo-
thetical sense, addressed to all ; but in truth it only
concerns some. The principle of logical distinction
was fearlessly applied to the last mystery — ^the rela-
tion of the divine and human spirit — in such a man-
BAXTER.
381
ner as to suppose a double or mixed action in the
former, whereby it was operative, and yet not ef-
fectually or successfully operative, in the bestowal
of grace. Baxter here, as everywhere, adopted the
principle of the Genevan theology, but developed
characteristically his own theory as to the solution
of the problem. " As there is a common grace," he
says, " actually extended to manlvind" (that is, com-
mon mercies contrary to their merit), " so there is
such a thing as sufficient grace in silo genere, whicli
is not effectual." The ordinary Calvinist was content
to say that there is common grace and there is special
grace, explaining the former in various ways, but with
a uniform result — viz., that it is not in a true or
saving sense grace at all. Baxter maintained that it
is truly grace, and yet not grace; or, in his own words,
"sufficient" grace, and yet not "effectual" grace-
something "without which man's will cannot, and
with which it can, perform the commanded act toward
which it is moved, when yet it doth not perform it."
This is surely to argue, and yet not to explain any-
thing. The spirit of rationalistic inquisition, carried
out more boldly and ingeniously, only ends in a
more hopeless perplexity — grace sufficient and yet
not sufficient! That the case baffles explanation —
that this and every relation of the infinite to the finite
evades all logical solution — was an admission too
plain and direct for the theology of the seventeenth
century.
In the same manner he argued regarding the great
contrast of election and rcprohatiooi. He supposed, in
the genuine spirit of his time, that he explained the
inscrutable secrets of the divine mind by the applica-
tion of modes of human expression which can have no
382 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
relation to that mind. He mistook, as such explanations
generally do, a mere verbal inventiveness for a pro-
cess of thought. He held firmly to election, and, in a
certain sense, to reprobation, yet not, as he said, pari
jjassu, or as both springing equally out of the will of
God. Such a view, which the more consistent Cal-
vinists around him held, was opposed to his deep
and pathetic recognition of the reality of the divine
" call to the unconverted." But, borne away as he
was by the argumentative subtlety of his day in the
treatment of such questions, he tried to fill up the gap
in his logical consistency by hypothetical reasonings
of his own, which, when analysed, have no meaning,
and touch no element of fact*
When we turn from Baxter's doctrinal writings to
his practical treatment of the Christian life, we meet
with the same spirit of over-zealous and burdensome
argumentativeness. His Christian Directonj, or Sum
of Practical Theology and Cases of Conscience, fills the
whole of the first volume of the folio edition of his
practical works. It traverses, in four parts, the wide
field of " Christian ethics, or private duties of Chris-
tians ; economics, or family duties of Christians ; eccle-
siastics, or church duties ; and of Christian politics, or
duties to our rulers and neighbours." As "Amesius's
* His reasoning, in this particular case, is plainly Arminian. It could
not, in foot, be anything else ; as. if such matters are to be reasoned
about at all, the process of reasoning must take one of two fundamental
lines, of which the Calvinistic is, bej'ond doubt, the onlj^ strictly logical
and conclusive. Baxter says, "In election, God is the cause of the
means of salvation by His grace, and of all that truly tendeth to procure
it. But, on the other side, God is no cause of any sin which is the
means and merit of damnation ; nor the cause of damnation, but on the
supposition of man's sin. So that sin is foreseen in the person decreed to
damnation, ltd not caused, seeing the decree must be denominated from
the effect and object."
BAXTEK. 383
Cases of Conscience were to his Medulla tlie se-
cond or practical part of theology," so he designed,
he tells us, his Directory as a supplement to his
Methoclus Thcologim. It is impossible, save in the
Eomish casuists, to find anything more minute, elabo-
rate, and formal, than Baxter's divisions and subdivi-
sions in this work. The Christian life is not con-
ceived in its related or broader characteristics as
a breathing and full-formed reality, rising in the
" beauty of holiness " from a germ of grace in the
heart, " the planting of the Lord, and honourable ; " but
it is dissected in every fibre and vein of its constitu-
tion; the rounded and spontaneous form stripped off,
and the skeleton framework and unsightly ligaments
every^vhere exposed. The outKne is not that of an
organic structure, but of an artificial model, end-
lessly divided in its parts, — but without comprehen-
sion, or even a just discrimination. The contem-
plation to which the reader is invited is a deeply
mournful and painful one, over which the heart grows
weary, and the conscience rises affrighted, rather than
gathers strength or quickening. There is no natural
end to the multiplication of questions and cases.
The author seems merely to stop in his catalogues
of sins and duties when his memory is run out for
the time. He admits this. After discussing, for
instance, " thirty tongue sins, and twenty questions
for the conviction of drunkards ; eighteen necessary
qualifications of lawful recreation; eighteen sorts that
are sinful ; and twelve convincing questions to those
who plead for such pastimes ; thirty-six questions about
contracts; twenty about buying and selling; sixteen
respecting theft; and one hundred and seventy-four
384 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
about matters ecclesiastical ;"* lie yet regrets that the
want of his library at the time when he composed
the work prevented him from enlarging his enumera-
tion of cases. " The very sight," he says, " of Sayrus,
Fragosa, Eoderiques, Tolet, &c., might have helped my
memory to a greater number."
It is perhaps not altogether fair to say that this me-
chanical and unreal treatment of the Christian life, as
an unceasing routine of vices to be avoided and virtues
to be learned, is characteristically Puritan. For the
Eomish casuists have carried the same mode of treat-
ment even to a greater and more unhappy excess, and
Baxter's contemporary, Jeremy Taylor, as prominent a
representative of Anglican, as Baxter is of Puritan, theo-
logy and piety, has, in his Ductor Duhitantium, followed
the same line. It was characteristic of the theological
spirit of the seventeenth century in its varied manifes-
tations. Yet there was that in Puritanism which an-
swered with a peculiar fitness to this casuistical in-
spection and analysis of life. Its disciplinary system,
as it sprang out of Geneva, was stamped with an in-
quisitorial authority which sought to touch the indi-
vidual Christian at every point, and to bring his con-
duct into conformity with definite rules. The necessity
of this disciplinary training — of the negation not merely
of human passions, but of human folly and amusement,
— by the application of outward restraints, was peculi-
arly Genevan. In no respect did the Puritans urge their
demands more forcibly while still a minority in the
Church, as in no respect did they carry them out more
intolerantly m the day of their triumph. After look-
ing into Baxter's Christian Directory, one can under-
stand how intolerable life would have been made had
* Orme's Life and Writings of Baxter, vol. ii. p. 175.
BAXTER. 385
the stricter form of Puritanism preserved its power,
and had it all its own way. It would have set up a
court of conscience* in every parish, and drilled human
conduct, in its most private activities, into a sombre
and harsh routine. As it was, it prescribed, wherever
it could, the old country sports, converted Christmas-
day into a fast, and punished adultery with death. To
such legislative restrictions it would have superadded
many yokes for the private conscience, which neither
our fathers of the seventeenth century nor their chil-
dren could bear. And none would have gone further
in this way than Baxter, because, with all his perspi-
cacity and sense, he was a man himself of infinite
scruples ; while his notions both of individual and civil
freedom were narrow and unenlightened. In this very
work he lays down, in opposition to Hooker, the doc-
trine of the divine right of government, and conse-
quently the duty of passive obedience, in the most
undisguised manner.
But if Baxter represented Puritanism in the over-
argumentative and unreal character, which both its
rehgious speculation and its religious discipline were
apt to assume, he was also the conspicuous representa-
tive of its spiritual energy and fervour ; and here every
mind will own his greatness. The details of Puritan
dogma and ethics may cease to excite interest ; but the
fire and life of Christian enthusiasm which, especially,
made Puritanism what it was, can never cease to stir
the heart, and awaken the admiration of all who appre-
ciate the self-sacrifice which is willing to spend and be
* Bishop Heber tells us, in his Life of Jeremy Taylor, that during Owen's
predominance at Oxford, asVice-Chancellor, a regular court of conscience
was held in the university, which the students ludicrously nicknamed the
" Scruple Shop."
2 B
386 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
spent in the service of God. Prophecies shall fail, and
tongues shall cease, and knowledge vanish away ; but
"charity never faileth." Whatever fate may overtake
dogmatical and ecclesiastical technicalities, spiritual
earnestness still shines with an imperishable lustre.
And there is no form of Christianity which has ever
been more instinct with this spiritual earnestness —
none which has sought more eagerly and intensely to
" win men to Christ," and to count all things but
loss, in comparison with the service and the glory of
God, than Puritanism ; while, of its great preachers,
there is no one who exhibits this feature more than
Kichard Baxter. We have already seen what his labours
were as a pastor ; and these labours were only a natural
expression of a divine energy in him, which knew not
how to rest. There was present, through all his days
and in all his work, such a constant sense of God and
the Unseen — such a practical apprehension of the
awful meaning of salvation in Christ — of men's wretch-
edness without Christ, and their blessing in Him — that
it coloured and ordered his whole existence. A rare
warmth of Christian sensibility glows in his sermons,
and gives to them and his practical writings the life
they still have. As we read the Saint's Rest, or the
Reformed Pastor, or the Call to the Unconverted, we
feel everywhere throbbing the pulse of an impassioned
seriousness. The speech is that of one who, gazing
beyond the mere shadow of earthly things, realises
himself all the " powers of the world to come," and
would have others do the same. Its burden is ever-
more the same message of divine love to perishing
sinners, "beseeching them in Christ's stead to be
reconciled to God." It is as if his own soul ever
moved responsively to the awful thought wliich he
BAXTER. 387
says, in his Reformed Pastor, should be present to the
mind of every preacher. '' 0, if these sinners loere hut
convinced and awakened, they might yet he converted and
liver " What ! " he adds, " speak coldly for God and
men's salvation ? Can we believe that our people must
be converted or condemned, and yet can we speak in
a drowsy tone ? In the name of God, brethren, labour
to awaken your hearts before you come ; and when you
are in the work, that you may be fit to awaken the
hearts of sinners." Baxter's own heart, in his more
memorable sermons, is on fire with an awakened sym-
pathy. The gleam of spiritual urgency lights up
every sentence. The pathos of spiritual tenderness
weeps over the sinner, and the awe of a mighty crisis
startles and alarms him. He has, as Sylvester said,
" a moving <7ra&o? and useful acrimony in his words.
When he spake of weighty soul concerns, you might
find his very spirit drenched therein." It is the noblest
aspect in which we can contemplate Puritanism when
we look upon it as summoning men with a terrible
zeal from the life of the world and of the flesh to the
life of faith in God ; and Baxter is the great apostle of
its evangelical fervency.
It is in the same point of view that his character
rises to its highest lustre. A single-minded earnest-
ness is its pervading feature — in the strength of which
every other is absorbed. Intellectually subtle and
hyper-logical — of an almost tormenting ingenuity of
argument and device — he was, in action, simple and
unselfish as a child, with no thought but for the good
of others. His rare disinterestedness is conspicuous
at every turn of his life. His spiritual devotedness
rises to martyrdom. Self was utterly forgotten in
388 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
tlie ever-active engrossing thought of doing good, and,
above all, of saving men's souls alive. " Love to the
souls of men," said one of his friends, " was the pecu-
liar character of Mr Baxter's spirit. All his natural
and supernatural endowments were subservient to this
blessed end. It was his meat and drink, the life and
joy of his life, to do good for souls."
This energy of spiritual enthusiasm, how it lives in
all he did and suffered ! His heart is in his work. He
carries forward every task with an impulsiveness that
glows in its restless zeal — that hurries forward and breaks
down obstacles rather than warily meets them. This
was not the quality most needed in some of the emer-
gencies of his life, and especially in those miserable
negotiations following the Eestoration, in Avhich he took
so conspicuous a share. His fiery and single-hearted
ardour was no match for the cool diplomacy and the
wily intrigue of Clarendon. But we love him none the
less, but all the more, for this. And when we see this
grand and loving energy engaged in its appropriate, its
highest, work — of " winning souls to Christ" — " bearing
all things, hoping all things, enduring all things, suffer-
ing long and yet kind" — we feel how great a hero was
this Puritan divine. Few have ever lived more unself-
ishly, more heroically — for God. Amidst pain and
weariness, amidst imprisonment and spoiling of his
goods, through disease and in the constant fear of death,
he kept a valiant heart, and he gave all its valour to
do the will and the work of Christ.
Tlius practically great, Baxter's character, like his
age, fails in breadth. Catholic in aspiration, and even
in principle — for no one has expounded with a more
wise and comprehensive moderation the grounds of
Christian union — he was yet contracted in sympathy,
BAXTER. 389
and frequently illiberal in feeling. His account of
Cromwell, and his description of the Sects, sufiiciently
show this. With all his generosity of impulse, there
was a tinge of harshness in him — a sharpness not of
nature but of temper. His constant suffering affected
his views of life and society, and imparted to them a
sombre tone irrespective of that which sprang out of
the general character of his Puritan faith. Yet in his
harshness there was no malignity, and not the least
trace of cynical indulgence. If sometimes ungenerous
in his appreciation of others, he was intolerant of any
weakness or sin in himself " I never knew any per-
son," said Dr Bates, " less indulgent to himself Self-
denial and contempt of the world were shining graces
in him."
Both his self-mortification, and his eager and plead-
ing affection for the spiritual good of others, can be
traced in the worn countenance which his familiar
portraits present. " Abstinence, severities, and labours
exceeding great," are marked in its ascetic lines and
somewhat grim expression ; while the depth of his
ardently affectionate soul speaks in the piercing eye.
Upon the whole, a certain painful severity predomi-
nates. Friends like Bates may have remembered his
countenance amidst its gravity, somewhat inclining to
a smile ;" but his portraits show nothing of this. There
is no smile lurks beneath their sad gaze. And so his
character is wanting in hearty vigour — in emotional
healthiness. There is a poverty of the merely natural
life — a lack of genial interest — and of the appreciation
of any mere earthly beauty or art — that takes from
it the richness of a full manhood. He was a Puritan,
and little more. Unlike our two former characters, he
rose but slightly above his time. As its systems con-
390 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
fined Ms intellect, its moral narrowness bound his char-
acter. He was strong in its strength ; he was weak
in its deficiences. The very intensity of his spiritual
earnestness was in some degree born of this one-sided-
ness. Had he possessed a broader feeling, and sym-
pathies more widely responsive to nature and life, he
could not have lived so entirely as he did above the
world, and given himself with such an unresting
vigilance to the love and ministry of souls. If we
look at him as a man, this want of breadth and vari-
ety of interest diminishes his greatness ; if we look
at him as the Puritan pastor and divine, it was the
very singleness of his spiritual energy that made his
excellence and crown.
In this view, the life of Eichard Baxter must ever
touch the Christian mind with the elevation of its
self-sacrifice. It was a steady, long-enduring heroism,
although the world may little regard him as a hero ;
and the more we look beneath the surface we shall find
that softer and engaging features were not wanting.
Gentleness, if not smiles, lay near to his severity ; and
beneath a certain irritability and flashing vehemence,
" rather plain than complimentary," there may be also
found the mildness of patience, and the beauty of a
silent cheerfulness.
IV.
B U N Y A N.
BUNYAN.
In our previous sketches we have contemplated Puri-
tanism in its more general and comprehensive aspects.
Cromwell and Milton, and even Baxter, are represent-
atives of this phase of our national life in those larger
and controversial relations in which it came promi-
nently into public notice, and entered as an element
of disturbance or settlement into our national history.
In Cromwell we have seen the culmination of its
military and political genius — in Milton, the highest
expression of its intellect — in Baxter, its ecclesiastical
and theological spirit ; but in none or all of these
have we contemplated, with the distinctness which it
deserves, its spiritual and social character. True,
there are in these lives many indications of the spi-
rituality which mainly animated and sustained the
movement, and made it a national power — which,
like a subtle cement, ran through all its parts and
compacted them into a great historical whole. It was
the strength of this spirituality which, more than any-
thing else, made the bond of connection between Crom-
well and his followers, and enabled him to represent
them with the effect and triumph that he did. Yet it
is mainly as the undercurrent of his life that it ap-
pears. The struggles of soul through which the hero
394 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
of tlie Commonwealth passed — and to wliicli many
features of his history and some of his letters testify
in the strongest manner — only rise to the surface here
and there as we survey the restless heroism of his
career. The military and political phases of his char-
acter draw away our interest. In Milton, again, the
working of the spiritual life is so strong and consistent
throughout, and so thoroughly interfused with the
growth of his intellectual being, that we can scarcely
distinguish it as a separate element — his w^hole nature
is so serious, so religious, and formed in its develop-
ment such a unity of power, tliat we would try in vain
to disentangle the special influences which entered
into its constitution and gave it such a massive and
controlling harmony ; while in Baxter, although we
everywhere come across the pervading spiritual feel-
ing in which lay the whole strength of his life and
the wonderful energy of his w^ork, the prominence of
the theological and ecclesiastical elements distract our
attention, and may be said to form the main charac-
teristics presented to us.
In order to give any adequate picture of Puritanism,
however, it is necessary to survey, as closely and as
much by itself as we can, its distinctive spiritual life.
To the Puritan and the Anglican, religion not merely
presented marked differences in externals — but in its
very spirit — in the mode in which it wrought within
the heart, and coloured and determined the inner
life. Tlie habit of religious thought which came from
Puritanism and that of the old Catholicism of Eng-
land, were widely distinguished. The Puritan's hatred
of externals, and reaction against the formalities in
which the Anglican piety delighted, drove his devo-
tional feeling to feed more upon itself, and so developed
BUNTAN. 395
an intense and passionate spirituality, and a social
instinct of a quite peculiar, as it was of a very in-
fluential, character. Both in Bunyan and in Baxter
we trace the influence of these characteristics, but in
the former especially. In the life of the author of the
Pilgrim's Progress we see tliem in their most simple
and unmixed form. Bunyan is, above all, the spiri-
tualist of Puritanism; while, at the same time, the
circumstances of his social position serve to reveal
more expressively than we have yet seen, the work-
ings of the system upon the oTdinary social existence
of those midland counties in which it abounded.
Bunyan's life is a spiritual story, with a very slight
setting of external incident and adventure. Its in-
terest is found in the vehement and critical inward
struggles which he has himself depicted, and not in
any succession of events or any rare development of
mental powers. His Grace Ahounding to the Chief
of Sinners — in which he has, with his own very vivid
and homely power, set forth the divine dealings with
his soul — is nothing else than his autobiography.
He had no other life to tell of in comparison ; for all
his outward activity as a preacher — broken by his long
imprisonment — and all his creative fertility as a writer,
were the mere expressions of the spiritual passion in
which he lived and moved and had his being. In so
far, however, as Bunyan's life does take us into the
outer world of England in the days of the Protectorate
and the Restoration, it serves, as we have said, to bring-
before us the everyday social aspects of Puritanism,
which are apt to escape us in lives of more public
prominence.
We have before us a Puritan life comparatively
divorced from all excitements of military, or political,
396 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
or ecclesiastical struggle. With the great events of his
time, with which Cromwell and Milton and Baxter come
into such close contact, he had nothing to do. He was,
in fact, only a youth of twenty-one when the King was
beheaded, and when the first great series of events
which crowned the Puritan struggle with triumph
was completed; and with this series of events we
could not connect him at all, were it not for a well
known anecdote of his own about the siege of Leices-
ter. Far away, then, from the centre of movement,
and in the background, as it were, of that stirring
time, runs the career of Bunyan. And yet not the
less, but all the more, on that account, he serves to
illustrate it in one of its most characteristic features.
He is not a prominent actor upon the stage ; but his
figure in the background is typically expressive of the
spirit which animated and governed a host such as
him, in everything but his genius. While Puritanism
was developing its lofty aims in the high places of
the kingdom, it was no less colouring by its influ-
ence every village and civic community. While it
was legislating for Europe, and writing State-papers
in behalf of the persecuted Protestants abroad, it was
moving the hearts and ordering the lives of the poor
women of Bedford, and of the tinker's son in the
neighbourhood; and its working in the one case, no
less than in the other, is necessary to enable us to
understand its full meaning, and to appreciate its
comprehensive and pervading power.
John Bunyan was born at Elstow, a village within a
mile of Bedford, in the year 1628, the year in which
Charles called his third Parliament — that famous Par-
liament of the Petition of Ptight, in which Cromwell
BUNYAN". 397
made his first speech. He was, he tells us, " of a low
and inconsiderable generation ; his father's house being
of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all
the families of the land." His father was, in short, a
tinker, and Bunyan himself was bred to the same call-
mg. The father, however, does not seem, any more
than the son, to have pursued his trade in the usual
vagabond-manner we associate with the name. For
Bunyan tells us that he was sent to school " to learn
both to read and to write, the which I also attained ac-
cording to the rate of other poor men's children, though
to my shame I confess I did soon lose what I had learn-
ed, even almost utterly." His boyhood was wild and
thoughtless— very much what we might conceive the
Hfe of a gipsy-tinker boy to be. He revelled in coarse
and profane language, and was careless of the truth,
or of any fear of God. In his own strong simple way he
tells us it was his delight " to be taken captive by the
devil at his will, being filled with all unrighteousness,"
the which " did so strongly work both in my heart and
life, that I had but few equals in both for cursing,
swearing, lying, and blaspheming the name of God."^'
^ This, we are to remember, is Bunyan's account of
his boyhood, as he looked back upon it from his later
religious point of view. It would be a mistake—
and yet it is one into which many of his biographers
have fallen— to suppose from the manner in which he
speaks of himself here and elsewhere, that his youth
was peculiarly wicked beyond that of the class to
which he belonged. There is clear evidence to the
contrary in his own statements. A habit of profane
swearing, and a wild and reckless indulgence in Sun-
day pastimes, are the facts of wickedness with which
his sensitive conscience charges his early years. From
398 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
licentiousness his own strong declarations expressly
free him ; and there is no evidence that he was ad-
dicted to drunkenness or any form of dishonesty which
we readily associate with his supposed gipsy race and
tinker occupation. The truth is rather that, from
his boyhood, Bunyan was of a strongly rehgious turn
of mind. The great ideas of life and death, heaven and
hell — those spiritual contrasts which afterwards he was
to embody in such rare variety and picturesqueness of
form — had smitten his impressionable imagination
from his youth, and clung to him. They did not for
many years work themselves into the fibre of his
spuitual being, so as to become its living and effec-
tual springs of action ; but they were there, dormant
and ready to start fortli into powerful consciousness.
If practically he now lived without God — and his
habit of profane swearing showed how far religion
was from having any real influence over liim — he
was yet so far from being without thoughts of re-
ligion, that such thoughts haunted him as living
things, moving in tlie shadowy background of his
being, and mingling in it every now and then with
a fearful though unpractical effect. They possessed
him. They peopled his dreams, and in their con-
stant presence and intimacy made familiar to him
the strangest fancies ; " for often," he says, " after I
had spent this and the other day in sin, I have been
greatly afflicted while asleep with the apprehensions
of devils and wicked spirits, who, as I then thought,
laboured to draw me away with them, of which I could
never be rid. Also I should, at these years, be greatly
troubled with thoughts of the fearful torments of hell-
fire ; still fearing that it would be my lot to be found
at last among those devils and hellish fiends who are
BUN YAK 399
there bound down with the chain and bonds of darkness
unto the judgment of the great day. These things, I
say, when I was but a child — but nine or ten years old —
did so distress my soul, that then, in the midst of my
many sports and childish vanities amidst my vain com-
panions, I was often much cast down and afflicted in
my mind therewith ; yet could I not let go my sins.
Yea, I was also then so overcome with despair of life
and heaven, that I should often wish either that there
had been no hell, or that I had been a devil, supposing
they were only tormentors ; that if it must needs be
that I went thither, I might rather be a tormentor than
be tormented myself"
Although such thoughts did little more than tor-
ment him, they never altogether left him. He never
appears, amid all his practical recklessness, to have
risen above them for any length of time. Every ac-
cident served to recall them, and religion rose before
his mind as a haunting image, even when he sought
to banish it away. There was a tenderness in his
heart towards it, while he was yet despising and tram-
pling it under foot. He says, for example, that while
taking pleasure in his own wickedness, it was a great
grief to him when he saw those who made a religious
profession doing wickedly. It made his " spirit trem-
ble." " As once above all the rest, when I was in the
height of vanity, yet hearing one to swear that was
reckoned for a religious man, it laid so great a stroke
upon my spirit that it made my heart ache."
He recalls various incidents in this early period of
his life of a providential character. Once "he fell
into a creek of the sea, and hardly escaped drowning."
Another time he fell out of a boat into the river Ouse,
" Bedford Eiver," as he calls it, "but mercy yet pre-
400 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
served him." At another time, when in the field with
a companion, he seized, he says, an adder, and " having
stunned her with a stick, he forced open her mouth,
and plucked her sting out with his fingers." He re-
mained unhurt ; but had it not been for the divine
mercy, his " desperateness" would have destroyed
him. Most memorable of all, when he was a soldier,
enlisted, it may be supposed temporarily, in defence of
the Commonwealth, he was " drawn out to go to such a
place to besiege it." This was in the summer of 1645
when Charles, having had his army finally broken on
the field of Naseby, sought a few hours' refuge in
Leicester, which he had taken some days before. It
was retaken by the Parliamentary forces a few days
later ; and Bunyan believed himself to have providen-
tially escaped death on the occasion. " When drawn
out as one of the besieging party, and just ready to go,"
he says, " one of the company desired to go in my room,
to which when I had consented, he took my place, and
coming to the siege, as he stood sentinel, he was shot
in the head with a musket bullet, and died." *
Following this — a year or two we must suppose,
for even two years would only make him nineteen —
he married ; and this event proved of the happiest
character to him. His wife was the daughter of
godly parents, and herself a pious woman. Unpro-
* According to this statement, it might seem doubtful whether Bun-
yan was really engaged at the siege of Leicester. Of Bunyan's military
career, indeed, it cannot be said that we know anything with distinct-
ness or certainty. It remains a matter of dispute, whether he belonged
to the Parliamentary or the Royalist army. His latest biographer, Mr
Offer, who enters on details, inclines to the opinion, that " so loyal a
man joined the Royal army, and not that of the Republicans." If in the
Parliamentary army he was probably engaged at Naseby, as well as pre-
sent at the siege of Leicester ; and, in any case, his military experience
left ineffaceable traces on his memory and imagination, as is abundantly
shown from the conception and composition of the Holi/ War,
BUNYAN. 401
vided with worldly goods — "not having so much house-
hold stuff as a dish or spoon" betwixt them, — she
had got "for her part," two books — The Plain Man's
Pathiuay to Heaven, and the Practice of Piety, — which
turned out of more value to liim than a richer marriage-
portion. The study of those books, aided by the re-
ligious conversation of his wife, deepened his reli-
gious impressions. He was still far, however, from
being a religious man. Outwardly he began " to fall
in very eagerly with the religion of the times ;" he
became a regular church-goer, and joined with great
apparent zeal in the service — nay, he was seized with
a fit of superstitious devotion towards all connected
with the church — " both the high place, priest, clerk,
vestment service, and what else belonging to it, count-
ing all things holy that were therein contained, and
especially the priest and clerk most happy, and with-
out doubt, greatly blessed, because they were the ser-
vants, as I then thought, of God, and were principal
in the holy temple to do his work therein. This con-
ceit grew so strong upon my spirit, that had I but seen
a priest (though never so sordid and debauched in his
life), I should find my spirit fall under him, reverence
him, and grant unto him ; yea, I thought, for the love
I did bear unto them (supposing they were the minis-
ters of God), I could have laid down at their feet, and
have been trampled upon by them ; their name, their
garb, and work did so intoxicate and bewitch me."
When Bunyan looked back upon this period of his
life, he could only see its gross superstition. He would
not admit that his conversion had yet begun. " All
this while," he says, " I was not sensible of the dan-
ger and evil of sin. I was kept from considering that
sin woidd damn me what religion soever I followed,
2 c
402 ENGLISH rURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
unless I were found in Christ. Nay, I never thought
whether there was such a one or no." But, sivinsf
the fullest assent to his own views, we cannot help
recognising in the new turn of his thoughts the work-
ing of the same religious nature and influences already
traced in his earlier dreams and visions.. These in-
fluences never forsake him. Now they pursue him as
shadowy terrors in his sleep ; and now they make
him adore the mere walls of a church, and the ground
on which a priest treads. His imagination is steeped
one way or another in religious ideas, and paints
with its vivid colours his inner life, altliough his moral
energies are as yet unaffected by them.
Practical results were by and by to follow his intense
agitation. For a while he struggled against the con-
victions and imaginations that possessed him, but they
were always acquiring a stronger hold of his heart, and
making themselves more felt and owned as motives to
action. The crises of spiritual impulse through which
he passed during this process, almost reached the point
of madness. His excited feelings now utter them-
selves in voices, and now image themselves in features
expostulating with him, and looking down upon him.
Never, certainly, did any one, by the mere strengtli of
imaginative passion, break down more than Bunyan
the boundaries of time and space, — pierce through the
objective facts amidst which most men live, — and pass
more really into the invisible world. One day he
heard a sermon on Sabbath-breaking, and it so filled
his mind that, he says, he for the first time felt what
guilt was. He went home for the time "greatly
loaded" with the sermon, " with a great burden on his
spirit." After reachmg home, however, and especially
after he had "well dined," the effect of the sermon
BUNYAN. 403
wore off. He sliook it out of his mind, and returned
with great delight to his old custom of sports and
gaming. " But the same day," he tells us, " as I was
in the midst of a game of cat, and having struck it one
blow from the hole, just as I was about to strike it the
second time, a voice did suddenly dart from heaven
into my soul, which said, ' Will thou leave thy sins
and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell ? ' At
this, I was x^ut to an exceeding maze ; wherefore, leav-
ing my cat upon the ground, I looked up to heaven,
and was as if I had, with the eyes of my understanding,
seen the Lord Jesus look down upon me, as being very
hotly displeased with me, and as if he did very severely
threaten me with some grievous punishment for those
and other ungodly practices." As " he stood in the
midst of his play," arrested by this voice and vision,
the conclusion fastened itself upon his spirit, " that he
had sinned beyond j)ardon, and that it was now too
late for him to look after heaven ; and burying all bet-
ter impulses in this overwhelming thought of despair,
he returned desperately to his sport again.
Such extremity of sj)iritual excitement could not
last ; and so we find him soon after this entering up-
on a new course. Startled out of his evil habit of
swearing by the rebuke of a woman at whose shop
window he was cursing in his wonted manner, and
who, though she was a very loose and ungodly wretch
herself, yet protested that he swore and cursed at such
a rate as made her tremble to hear, he began a career
of outward reformation. He left off entirely the habit
which had become a second nature to him ; and whereas
before he could not speak " without putting an oath
before and another behind," he was now able to speak
without a single oath, " better and with more pleasant-
404 ENGLISH PUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
ness than ever lie Imd done before." At the same time
he fell into the company of an old man who "made
profession of religion," and whose conversation led him
to the study of the Scriptm^es, in the historical narratives,
of which, he says, he took great pleasure ; " but as for
Paul's Epistles, and such like Scriptures, he could not
away with them."
In this state he continued for about a year, during
which he set the commandments before him " for his
way to heaven." He strove earnestly to keep them,
and when he succeeded in doing so he was comfort-
ed ; and when at any time he fell away from them he
was greatly afflicted. His neighbours remarked with
amazement his " conversion from prodigious profane-
ness to something like a moral life ;" and when he
heard them commending him, it pleased him " mighty
well." In all this Bunyan found evidence that he was
nothing as yet but "a poor painted hypocrite." On
this period of his life, when he was esteemed " a right
honest man," he looked back with scarcely less com-
placency than he did upon the preceding period of pro-
faneness. All this while he was " ignorant of Jesus
Christ, and going about to establish his own righteous-
ness." The sharp decision Avith which he seized the
different features of the religious life, and the realistic
persistency with which he separated and individualised
them, prevented him from seeing the threads of unity
running through the different stages of his career. The
same wonderful imagination that peopled the Pilgrim's
Progress with living creatures representative of distinct
qualities and states in religious experience — each with
a separate personality — made him conceive his own
several states vividly apart from one another. During
this period, therefore, he was merely dwelling, accord-
BUNYAN. 405
ing to his own figure, in the village of Morality, and
acting the part of Mr Worldly Wiseman. Yet his re-
ligions education was advancing more than he after-
wards thought. He had not found the true spring
of spiritual life ; but he was groping towards it ra-
ther than turning out of the way when he felt con-
scientiously concerned about keeping the divine com-
mandments, and found some peace of conscience in
doing so.
The full blessing of grace was about to visit him ;
and it came, as God's blessings often come, in what
might seem the most accidental manner. Bunyan
had listened to many sermons, and not without profit,
not without severe excitement of conscience in one
case that we have seen. But "the word fitly spoken,"
and which dropped as good seed into the good and
honest heart, did not come to him from any sermon,
but from the chance talk of " three or four poor wo-
men sitting at a door of one of the streets of Bedford,
Their talk was about a new birth, the work of God in
their hearts, as also how they were convinced of their
miserable state by nature ; they talked how God had
visited their souls with his love in the Lord Jesus, and
with what words and promises they had been refresh-
ed, comforted, and supported against the temptations
of the devil. And methought," he adds, " they spake
with such pleasantness of scripture language, and with
such appearance of grace in all they said, that they
were to me as if they had found a new world. At
this I felt my own heart begin to shake, for I saw that
in all my thoughts about religion and salvation, the
new birth did never enter into my mind."
The conversation of these poor women in the streets
of Bedford marks the turning-point in Bunyan's life.
406 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
Their words about the new birth sank deeply into his
heart. When he left them, and went about his em-
ployment, his thoughts still " tarried with them,"
and he returned again and again to their society, till
the spark kindled by their words burned into a liv-
ing and warming flame. For the first time, his spi-
ritual emotions were not merely agitated but soothed.
The feeling not merely of his own wickedness, but of
God's method of saving him from his wickedness, came
home to him, and he was seized with a "very great
softness and tenderness of heart," and also with " a
continual meditating" on what these poor women had
asserted to him from Scripture. He passed, for a
time, into a highly ecstatic frame of mind. He was
lifted, as it were, out of the earthly and formal life
that he had been living, and brought near to the very
gates of heaven. He could not get his spiritual aspi-
rations satisfied ; and in his intense desires after the
things of heaven, this world and all its good seemed to
him poor and unprofitable. " Tliough I speak it with
shame," he says, " yet it is a certain truth : it would
then have been as difficult for me to have taken my
mind from heaven to earth, as I have often found it
since to get again from earth to heaven."
He now finally parted from all his old companions ;
and he gives us a mournfully affecting glimpse of one
of them who madly resolved to go on in his evil ways.
There is a wild strange pathos in the contrast between
the old companions parting on the road of life — the
affectionate tenderness of Bunyan, and tlie dare-devil
recklessness of his friend. " There was a young man
in our town to whom my heart before was bent more
than to any other ; but he, being a most wicked crea-
ture, I now shook him off and forsook his company ;
BUNYAN. 407
"but about a quarter of a year after I had left him, I
met him in a certain lane, and asked him how he did.
He, after his old swearing and mad way, answered ' he
was well.' 'But, Harry,' said I, 'why do you curse
and swear thus ? Wliat will become of you, if you die
in this condition?' He answered me in a great chafe,
* What would the devil do for company, if it were not
for such as I am ! ' "
But a new trial awaited him in the course upon
which he had entered. The spirit of Antinomianism,
which spread so widely in the wake of the religious
excitement which had long been moving England,
was extending among the religious professors at Bed-
ford. The " Eanters' books " were eagerly read, and
held in high esteem by many. The poor man who
had first by his conversation led Bunyan to the study
of the Holy Scriptures, and with whom he had ever
since maintained a religious intimacy, fell under the
influence of these books. The doctrines of grace were
exaggerated by him into doctrines of license, and he
abandoned himself to his new impulses with all the
vehemency of an enthusiastic nature. " He turned,"
says Bunyan, " a most devilish Eanter, and gave him-
self up to all maimer of filthiness, especially unclean-
ness ; he would deny that there was a God, angel, or
spirit, and would laugh at all exhortations to sobriety.
"When I laboured to rebuke his wickedness, he would
laugh the more, and pretend that he had gone through
all religions, and could never hit upon the right till
now."
Startling as such contrasts appear, and inconsistent
with all sanity of judgment, they were not uncommon
in this age. Men's minds in such a storm of religious
fervour as prevailed passed rapidly from one extreme
408 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
to another. There was no principle too fixed or sacred
for discussion : all landmarks in religious doctrines
and experience had been torn up, and the spirit of
inquiry, once set in motion, ran in many such cases
as this "poor man," from indifference to earnestness
and the study of the Bible, and from these again,
under some new and irrepressible stimulus, to con-
tempt, and libertinism both of thought and practice.
In this respect Puritanism was merely repeating the
history of every great religious revival. It seems im-
possible for multitudes to be moved by the doctrines
of grace and the sweeping and contagious fervour
that comes from a revived interest in these doctrines,
without many yielding, as the wave of religious feeling
begins to ebb, to a certain licence of feeling. With the
thoughts continually lifted above the practical duties
of morality into that higher region where the Divine
comes into immediate contact with the human, — trans-
ported beyond the lower levels of religion to the prime
source whence it issues — in which are all its springs —
it is no wonder if ignorant and unbalanced minds
should try to make the original spiritual element every-
thing, and turn the act of grace into a cover of their
lawlessness. Certainly there have been those who in
all such times have done so, — whose principle has
been that " God does not and can not see any sin in
any of his justified children."* The act of grace is
held to be not only primary and absolute, but also
adequate in itself — apart from all moral result ; and
inflamed with this dominant idea, they turn religion
into a frenzy, and piety into a barren ecstasy or a mis-
chievous unreality.
This spirit had been now spreading in England for
* Quoted from the works of Antinomian leaders. — See Marsden, p. 224.
BUNYAN. 409
some years ; and we have already, in our sketch of
Baxter, seen the fruits of it. During the two preced-
ing Stuart reigns tliere had been hanging on the
verge of Puritanism various sects with a tendency to
doctrinal latitudinarianism, such as the Anabaptists,
Brownists, and Eamilists. These had risen into new
prominence with the dissolution of the old ecclesias-
tical bonds ; and along with them had sprung up the
other and wilder sects of which we have spoken —
Seekers, Behmenists, and Perfectionists, one and all
seeking the ideal of religion in an arbitrary mys-
ticism transcending the common duties and responsi-
bilities of life. The Ptanters were the last and extreme
offshoot of this spirit, many of whom, like Bunyan's
poor friend, seem to have been carried from excess to
excess till they denied the very existence of God ;
while others conceived of Him as a bodily shape, and
others as a mere pervading Principle in the universe.
The same spirit readily took the most different shapes
of temporary belief or of no-belief. Ignorance and
vanity, once unbridled, knew no limit to the vagaries
of fantastic spiritualism into which they ran.
Bunyan was in some respects not unlikely to have
fallen under the influence of this spirit. The almost
diseased activity of his spiritual imagination, and his
ignorance of Christian truth, combined with his suscep-
tibility to its broadest and most mysterious represen-
tations, might have proved a fitting soil for the recep-
tion of this extravagant mysticism. But with all his
religious excitability, he possessed a healthy natural
sense and manliness which saved him from such wild
opinions. He does not deny that they presented
something congenial to him, — that they were " suitable
to his flesh ; " but God, who had designed better things
410 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
for him, " did not suffer him to accept them/' His
increasing love of the Bible, and his growing percep-
tion of its cardinal doctrines, enabled him to see how
widely they were opposed to " such cursed principles,"
and preserved him in the right path. The Epistles
of St Paul, wliich he had formerly despised, now began
to open their meaning to him. "I began," he says,
" to look into the Bible with new eyes ; and especially
the Epistles of the Apostle St Paul were sweet and
pleasant to me ; and then I was never out of the
Bible, either by reading or meditation, still crying out
to God that I might know the truth and way to
heaven and glory."
But his views of Scripture were withal still dark
and confused. Although he had got into the right
track, his was too intense, and, at the same time, too
ignorant, a nature to go on in an even course of pro-
gress. His " Christian " was the type of himself ;
and the difficulties and temptations which beset the
" Pilgrim " in his " Progress " from this world to that
which is to come, are not more numerous than those
which beset the author on his own spiritual journey.
In reading the Scriptures, he became greatly perplexed
by the w^ord " faith ; " especially this word, " put him
to it." He mused on it, and could not tell what to do.
Without faith he felt he could not be saved ; but how to
tell whether he had faith or not baffled all his thought.
At last the idea struck him that the only way in which
he could really learn that he had faith was " by try-
ing to work some miracles ;" and one day as he went,
between Elstow and Bedford this temptation was " hot!
upon him," and took special form in his mind, urging
him " to say to the puddles that were in the horse
pond, Be dry ; and to the dry places. Be you puddles.''
BUN Y AN. 411
Just as lie was going to make tlie trial the thought
came to him : " But go under yonder hedge and pray
first that God would make you able. But when I
had concluded to pray, this came hot upon me, that if
I prayed and came again and tried to do it, and yet
did nothing notwithstanding, then to be sure I had
no faith, but was a castaway and lost. Nay, thought
I, if it be so, I will not try yet, but stay a little longer,"
But still the thought kept tormenting him, and tossed
" betwixt the devil and his own ignorance," he was so
perplexed that he did not know what to do.
During all this time he seems to have maintain-
ed a religious intimacy with the poor women at Bed-
ford whose conversation had been originally so blessed
to him. These women belonged to a small Baptist
congregation which met under the ministry of one
John Gifford, whose history, like Bunyan's own, and
even more than his, presents a strange picture of
the extremes of experience and life through which
many passed in this eventful time. Gifford had been
a major in the Eoyal army, and, having been engaged
in some Eoyalist insurrection, was seized, and sen-
tenced to the gallows. By the help of his sister he
contrived to make his escape on the night before his
intended execution ; and after undergoing many hard-
ships, he came to Bedford in disguise, and began the
practice of physic. He had lived in the army, and he
continued in his new profession to live a reckless and
ungodly life, devoted to drinking, gambling, and pro-
faneness. He cherished a peculiar bitterness against
the Puritans, and is said even to have entertained the
design of killing one of their leading men in Bedford,
for no other reason than to gratify his ferocity against
them. Such a man might seem an unlikely subject
412 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
ever to become a Puritan and Baptist preacher. But
so it came about. In a fit of desperation, after losing
money in gambling, Gifford happened to look into one
of the books of Eobert Bolton, and what he read so
impressed him, that he betook himself to the company
of the persons whom he had so scorned ; and, being
"naturally bold," he soon rose to distinction among
them. He formed a number of them, among whom
was the very person he had thought of killing, into a
separate congregation, and became their pastor. To
this small congregation belonged the poor women
whose talk had reached Bunyan's heart ; and Bunyan
liimseK about this time became attached to it. "We
can understand the influence that a strong and zeal-
ous man like Gifford would exercise over a sensi-
tive and inquiring mind like Bunyan's; and the his-
torian* of the English Baptists has represented him
as the evangelist who pointed out to our perplexed
pilgrim the wicket-gate, by instructing him in the
knowledge of the Gospel. Certainly, the happy spirit-
ual state of " these poor" Baptist people deeply pos-
sessed his mind. It imaged itself to him in a kind
of vision," which, both for its own beauty, and the
interesting analogy which it presents to some of the
after-thoughts of the Pilgrims Progress, deserves to
be quoted. " I saw," he says, " as if they were on the
sunny side of some high mountain, there refresh-
ing themselves with the pleasant beams of the sun,
while I was shivering and shrinking in the cold,
aflQicted with frost, snow, and dark clouds. Methought,
also, betwixt me and them, I saw a wall that did com-
pass about this mountain ; now through this wall my
soul did greatly desire to pass, concluding that if I
* Mr Ivimey.
BUN Y AN". 413
could, I would even go into the very midst of them,
and there also comfort myself with the heat of their
sun. About this wall I thought myself to go again
and again, still prying as I went to see if I could find
some way or passage by which I might enter therein,
but none could I find for some time. At the last, I
saw, as it were, a narrow gap, like a little door-way in
the wall, through which I attempted to pass. Now, the
passage being very straight and narrow, I made many
offers to get in, but all in vain, even until I was well-
nigh quite beat out by striving to get in. At last,
with great striving, methought I at first did get in
my head ; and after that, by a sideling striving, my
shoulders and my whole body ; then was I exceeding
glad, went and sat down in the midst of them, and so
was comforted with the light and heat of their sun.
Now, the mountain and wall were thus made out to
me. The mountain signified the church of the living
God : the sun that shone thereon, the comfortable
shining of his merciful face on them that were within :
the wall, I thought, was the word that did make sepa-
ration between the Christians and the world : and the
gap which was in the wall, I thought, was Jesus Christ,
who is the way to God the Father. But forasmuch as
the passage was wonderful narrow, even so narrow
that I could not but with great difficulty enter in
thereat, it showed me that none could enter into life
but those that were in downright earnest, and unless
also they left that mcked world behind them — for here
was only room for body and soul, but not for body and
soul and sin."
Bunyan's spiritual perplexities were far from being
at an end. In fact, as his mind opened to the deeper
mysteries of the Christian faith, and his acquaintance
414 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
witli Scripture grew in detail, without as yet harmon-
ising into a consistent whole, he became the victim of
anxieties still darker and more tormenting than he had
hitherto experienced. He had been troubled about
faith — he was now troubled about election. In both
cases his temptation was the same — to look away from
Christ to himself — to fix his attention not upon the
fulness of divine grace, but on the limits and conditions
which seemed to accompany the act of grace. As he
had formerly asked, " But how if you want faith in-
deed? how can you tell you have faith?" so now he
asked, " How can you tell that you are elected ; and
what if you should not — ^how then ? " " Why then,"
said Satan, "you had as good leave off, and strive no
further ; for if, indeed, you should not be elected and
chosen of God, there is no hope of your being saved.
For it is neither in him that willeth, nor in him that
runneth, but in God that showeth mercy." " By these
things I was driven to my wit's end, not knowing what
to say, or how to answer these temptations." Strangely
enough, he found comfort and strength in this per-
plexity from a text in the Apocrypha.* It came to
him as a light in the midst of his darkness. As he
was " giving up the ghost " of all his hopes, the sen-
tence fell with weight upon his spirit. It was as if it
talked with him. " Look at the generations of old
and see — did ever any trust in God and were con-
founded ? " He was somewhat daunted to find it only
in the Apocrypha ; but he says, very sensibly, that al-
though it was not among those texts that we caU holy
and canonical, yet as the sentence was the sum and
substance of many of the promises, it was my duty to
take the comfort of it : and I bless God for that word
* Ecclesiasticus, ii. 16.
BUNYAN. 415
— for it was of good to me. That word doth still
ofttimes shine before my face."
His next doubt was, " But how, if the day of grace
should be past and gone ? — how if you have overstood
the time of mercy ? " As he was walking in the country
one day, this doubt came upon him ; and with that
strange ingenuity with which the spirit learns to tor-
ment itself in such a case, the thought suggested itself
to him that the small congregation of good people at
Bedford was all that God would save in tliese parts,
and tliat he had come too late, for these had got the
blessing before him. At length, however, he thought
on the text — " Compel them to come in that my house
may be filled — and yet there is room ;" and in the light
and encouragement of this word he went a pretty
while.
About this time he was in the habit of frequenting
Mr Gifford's house, " to hear him confer with others
about the dealings of God with their souls ; " but he
derived little or no benefit, he tells us, from these con-
ferences ; he only learned the more to see his own
wickedness and corruption, "I could not believe
that Christ had a love for me. Alas ! I could neither
hear him, nor see him, nor feel him, nor favour any of
his things. I was driven as with a tempest : my heart
would be careless ; the Canaanites would dwell in the
land. Sometimes I would tell my condition to the
people of God, when they would pity me, and tell me
of the promises ; but they had as good have told me
that I must reach the sun with my fingers as have
bidden me receive or rely upon the promises. All my
sense and feeling were against me ; and I saw I had a
heart that would sin, and that lay under a law that
would condemn."
416 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
In this state lie continued " for some years together."
Like Luther, he could only say, Oh my sins ! my sins !
They seemed to cleave unto him, and wholly pollute
him. "I thought now that every one had a better
heart than I had. I thought none but the devil him-
self could equalise me for inward wickedness and
pollution of mind." And yet all this while he was
" never more tender as to the act of sinning. His
conscience would smart at every touch, and he could
not tell how to speak his words for fear he should mis-
place them." His sensitiveness of conscience was such
that he dreaded even that his very torments should
cease. " For I found that unless guilt of conscience
were taken off the right w^ay — that is, by the blood of
Christ — a man grew rather worse for the loss of his
trouble of mind." And in order that this should not
be his case, he would muse upon the punishment of
sin in hell-fire, that the sense of sin might be kept
alive in his heart. In this condition, a sermon that he
heard on the love of Christ brought for a while peace
to him. The words — "Thou art fair, my love," ap-
plied to the poor tempted soul, seized upon him. He
was in great joy for a time. " Thou art my love —
thou art my love. " " Twenty times together," this
would sound in his heart, and it grew warmer as the
blessed accents repeated themselves. At length he
felt as if his sins could be forgiven him. "Yea," he
says, " I was now so taken with the love and mercy of
God, that I remember I could not tell how to contain
till I got home. / thought I could have spoken of his
love, and have told of his mercy to me, even to the very
crows that sat in the ploughed lands before me."
This time of gladness did not last long. He wished
that he had possessed a pen and ink in the moment of
BUNYAN. 417
his elevation, to write down God's goodness to him,
for surely he will not forget it forty years hence.
"But, alas !" he adds, "within less than forty days, I
began to question all again."
The vividness of his spiritual feelings kept him on
the rack, and pursued him as a tormenting presence.
His imagination gave voice and shape to his inward
suggestions ; and a text became to him a living being
following him, and addressing him. About a week or
a fortnight after the last manifestation of grace to his
soul, he says, " I was much followed by the scrip-
ture— 'Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to
have you ; ' and sometimes it would sound so loud
within me, that once above all the rest I turned my
head over my shoulder, thinking, verily, that some
man behind me called me, being at a great distance,
methought he called so loud. . . . Methinks I
hear still, with what a loud voice these words — ' Simon,
Simon,' sounded in mine ears ; and, although, that was
not my name, yet it made me suddenly look behind
me, believing that he that called so loud meant me."
He did not understand the meaning of this at the time,
but afterwards it seemed to him as a warning that a
" cloud and storm was coming down upon him."
In truth, his temptations assumed now a darker and
more fearful form. Hitherto they had concerned his
own safety — now they attacked his trust in religion
altogether. He was "handled twenty times worse
than he had been before ; " all comfort was taken from
him ; darkness seized upon him ; after which " whole
floods of blasphemies, both against God, Christ, and
the Scriptures," were poured upon his spirit, to his
great confusion and astonishment. "Whether there
were in truth a God or Christ, and whether the holy
2 D
418 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
Scriptures were not rather a fable and cunning story,
than the holy and pure word of God" — such were the
questions that agitated and darkened him. He could
not rest "from morning to night." He was carried
away with them as " with a mighty whirlwind." His
only consolation was that he felt there was something
in him opposed to such questions. While under this
temptation, he often found his mind suddenly put upon
it, "to curse and swear, or to speak some grievous
things against God, or Christ, his Son, and of the
Scriptures." At times, he thought himself possessed
of the devil. At other times, he seemed as if he should
be bereft of his wits. His agitation certainly verged
on insanity. His will seemed to lose all control. He
compares himself to a child forcibly seized by a gipsy,
and carried away from friend and country. He would
kick, and shriek, and cry, yet he was bound on the
wings of the temptation, and the wind would carry
him away. When he heard others talk of the sin
against the Holy Ghost, the temptation was so strong
upon him to commit this sin, that he says — " I have
often been ready to clap my hands under my chin to
hold my mouth from opening ; at other times, to leap
with my head downwards into some muckhill hole to
keep my mouth from speaking." Like Luther, he
felt the presence of the Tempter disturbing all his
efforts at devotion. " Sometimes I have thought I
have felt him behind me pull my clothes. He would
be also continually at me in time of prayers to have
done — to break off^ — make haste — you have prayed
enough, and stay no longer — still drawing my mind
away. When I have had wandering thoughts, and I
have laboured to compose my mind, and fix it upon
God, then with great force hath the Tempter laboured
BUNYAN. 419
to distract and confound me, and to turn away my
mind by presenting to my heart and fancy the form of
a brute, a bull, a bison, or the like, as if I should pray
to these." In his misery, the animals moved his envy,
and he would gladly have exchanged his condition for
that of a dog or a horse. And yet, while thus bleed-
ing at every pore of his spiritual being, he complains
of his insensibility. His heart was so hard at times,
he says, " that he would have given a thousand pounds
to shed a tear, and could not."
Gradually light began to break upon this period of
his darkness. Various scriptures came to his aid.
One day, as he was sitting in a neighbour's house,
very sad at the consideration of his many blasphe-
mies, this "word" came suddenly to him, "What shall
we say to these things ? * If God be for us, who can be
against us?' Because I live, ye shall live also." " But
these words were but hints, touches, and short visits;
though very sweet when present." Such "angel visits"
gradually increased ; and Mr Gifford's instructions
proved also wholesome in his distress. He made rapid
progress for a while in faith and in peace of mind.
He was led from truth to truth in a manner that
excited his astonishment, as he recalled it. "Truly,"
he exclaims, " I thus found, upon this account, the
great God was very good unto me ; for, to my remem-
brance, there was not anything that I thus cried unto
God to make known and reveal unto me but he was
pleased to do it for me." He found strength and
comfort even from the contemplation of the errors of
the Quakers, which led him to the study of the
Scriptures, for, as " the Quakers did oppose the truth,
so God did thus the more confirm me in it, by leading
me into the scripture that did wonderfully maintain
420 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
it." His elevation and spiritual happiness were re-
markable for a time. It would be too long "to stay
and tell in particular how God did set me down in
all the things of Christ — yea, and also how He did
open His words unto me, and make them shine before
me, and cause them to dwell with me, talk with me,
and comfort me over and over, both of His own being
and the being of his Son and Spirit and Word and
Gospel." And just as before in his depression, his
imagination had conjured up miserable voices and
hideous images, which. haunted him as realities — so
now, in his elevation, it pictured to him, in visible
forms of beauty, the assurance of his salvation, " I
had an evidence, as I thought, of my salvation from
heaven, with many golden seals thereon, all hanging
in my sight;" and the heavenly sight did so ravish
him that he wished the last day were come, or that
he were " fourscore years old now, that he might die
quickly, and that his soul might go to rest."
It is an affecting contemplation this wonderful
child-nature of the great Puritan dreamer — now moved
to grief — now strung to joy — now plunged in horrors
of great darkness — and now raised to heights of celes-
tial blessedness. Eeflection scarcely enters into his
varying moods; he is not swayed by any calm and
coherent succession of ideas. Truth or error, in the
abstract, is nothing to him; he cannot hold them
before his mind, and contemplate, and weigh the
thoughts which they present ; but he lives himself in
all his thoughts. Transmuted into passions — made
living by the ever-burning glow of his imagination —
they become all-powerful for the time, and carry him
whithersoever they will.
About this time a copy of Martin Luther's Commen-
BUNYAN. 421
tary on the Galatians fell into his hands, and proved
greatly beneficial to him. The copy was so old that it
was ready to fall piece from piece if he did but turn it
over ; but its antiquity only made it the more precious
in his eyes ; and when he had " but a little way per-
used," he found his condition " so largely and pro-
foundly handled in it, as if it had been written out of
his own heart." This spiritual affinity between Luther
and Bunyan is very striking and interesting. In the
realistic vividness and fertility of their spiritual im-
agination they were strongly allied. The divine life
imaged itself to them in the same depths and heights,
the same representative contrasts, the same agencies
of Satanic and of angelic and heavenly power. The
presence of evil was to Luther the same personal
tempter as to Bunyan — reasoning with him, pulling
at his clothes, violently and insolently assaulting him ;
and the idea of deliverance suggested itself to both
in the same manner, as an immediate influence
from above lifting them out of their sins. The spi-
ritual experience of Luther accordingly was a mir-
ror in which Bunyan might well see his own heart
reflected, while the doctrine of the Commentary on the.
Galatians was exactly such as was calculated to min-
ister to his urgent necessities. He never forgot his
obligation to this book ; he continued to prefer it (ex-
cepting the Holy Bible) before all other books, " as
most fit for a wounded conscience."
And now, for a brief space, his heart was bound in
delightful union with Christ. The day seemed for
him to break, and the shadows to flee away. " Oh ! "
he exclaims, "methought my soul cleaved unto Christ,
my affections cleaved unto him. I felt my love to him
as hot as fire ; " and yet a deeper and more torment-
422 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
ing trial tlian he had yet experienced was awaiting
him. He seemed to have been raised to the heights
of love, and to have been gladdened with the sight of
the Delectable Mountains, only to be plunged into a
deeper "valley of the shadow of death." "Quickly
after this my love was tried to the purpose. Eor,
after the Lord had in this manner thus graciously de-
livered me from this great and sore temptation, and
had given me such strong consolation and blessed evi-
dence from heaven, touching my interest in his love
through Christ, the tempter came upon me again, and
that with a more grievous and dreadful temptation
than before."
■ This temptation was nothing less than " to sell and
part with the blessed Christ, to exchange him for the
things of this life — for anything." This horrid sugges-
tion haunted hun day and night for a whole year. He
was not rid of it " one day in a month, no, not some-
times one hour in many days together, unless when
asleep." It mixed itself in all he did, so that he
could not eat his food, " stoop for a pin, chop a stick,
or cast his eye to look on anything," without the
thought pursuing him, " Sell Christ for this, or sell
Christ for that ; sell Him — sell Him." Under the in-
fluence of this temptation he was once more reduced
to a state bordering on insanity. He was so stirred
with the idea of yieldmg to the horrid suggestion,
that his mental agitation showed itself in his bodily
movements, and he would thrust forth liis hands or
elbows in deprecation, still answering, as fast as the de-
stroyer said, " Sell Him," — "I will not, — I will not: no,
not for thousands, — thousands, — thousands of worlds,"
reckoning in this manner lest he should seem to set
too low a value u^^on Him," until he scarcely knew
BUNYAN. 423
where he was, or what to do. This lasted for some
time; his mind was continually disquieted, and no-
thing could give him rest; but he still repelled the
assaults of the adversary ever as they were renewed ;
until one morning, as he lay in his bed under un-
usually fierce temptation, he felt the thought pass
through his mind, " Let Him go if He will." The old
spirit of resistance relaxed for a moment, — worn out
by frequent straining ; and he felt his heart, as he
fancied, freely consent to the dreadful impulse. " Oh !
the diligence of Satan ! " he cries, " Oh ! the desx^erate-
ness of man's heart ! Now was the battle won, and
down fell I, as a bird that is shot from the top of a tree,
into great guilt and fearful despair. Thus, getting
out of my bed, I went moping into the field, but, God
knows, with as heavy a heart as mortal man, I think,
could bear, where, for the space of about two hours, I
was like a man bereft of life, and as now past all
recovery, and bound over to eternal punishment."
There is a strange sad vividness in the picture that
he draws of the misery into which he was now plunged
— the alternations of fear and horror and partial hope
that came upon him. He thought of the passage in
Hebrews, xii. 16, 17, about Esau selling his birthright,
and afterwards finding no place for repentance, though
he sought it carefully with tears ; and the words became
to his soul " like fetters of brass to his legs, in the con-
tinual bondage of which he went for several months
together." Yet from the first, too, a casual gleam of
hope illuminated the thick darkness of his trial.
About ten or eleven o'clock on the same day that he
seemed to himself to have committed the fearfid sin of
selling his Saviour, he says, " As I was walking under
a hedge (full of sorrow and guilt, God knows), and be-
424 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
moaning myself for this hard hap, that such a thought
should arise within me, suddenly this sentence rushed
in upon me, ' The blood of Christ remits all guilt.' At
this I made a stand in my spirit ; with that this word
took hold upon me, ' The blood of Jesus Christ his own
Son cleanseth us from all sin,' 1st John, i. 7. Now I
began to conceive peace in my soul ; and methought I
saw as if the Tempter did leer and steal away from me,
as being ashamed of what he had done." But this
pleasant gleam of light and peace by the hedgerows
on the first day that he meditated with a darkened
heart on his sin, soon left him, and through many suc-
ceeding pages he does little but represent the phases
of gloomy and despairing thought into which he was
plunged. He imagined he had committed the un-
pardonable sin ; and an " ancient Christian," to whom
he confided his anxious terror, told him that " he
thought so too." He compared his sin with David's,
and Peter's, and Judas' ; and the only relief he had in
the retrospect was, that he had not "as to the circum-
stances " transgressed so fully as Judas. Even this
bare hope was quickly gone. It seemed to him as if
no sin equalled his own. " He had sold his Saviour,
and there remained to him no more sacrifice for sin."
" This one consideration would always kill my heart
— my sin was point blank against my Saviour, and
that, too, at that height, that I had in my heart said
of Him, ' Let Him go if He will.' Oh ! methought
this sin was bigger than the sins of a country, of a
kingdom, or of the whole world, no one pardonable,
not all of them together was able to equal mine ; mine
outwent them every one."
A breath of hope sometimes ruffled the current of
his misery. Once as he was walking to and fro " in
BUNTAN. 425
a good man's shop," bemoaning his sad and doleful
state, and afflicting himself with self-abhorrence for
his wicked and ungodly thought, " suddenly there was
as if there had rushed in at the window the noise of
wind upon me, but very pleasant, and as if I heard a
voice speaking, ' Didst thou ever refuse to be justified
by the blood of Christ?' To this my heart answered
groaningly, ' No.' Then fell with power that word of
God upon me, ' See that ye refuse not Him that speak-
eth ' (Heb. xii. 25). This made a strange seizure upon
my spirit ; it brought light with it, and commanded
a silence in my heart of all those tumultuous thoughts
that did before use — like masterless hellhounds — to
roar and bellow, and make a hideous noise within me.
It showed me, also, that Jesus Christ had yet a word
of grace and mercy for me, that He had not, as I had
feared, quite forsaken and cast off my soul. Verily,
that sudden rushing wind was as if an angel had come
upon me, — it commanded a great calm in my soul ;
it persuaded me there might be hope." Yet again
the Tempter returned. With the resurrection of hope
the spirit of prayer awoke in him, and when about to
humble himself, and beg that God would, of His won-
derful mercy, show pity to- him, and have compassion
upon his wretched sinful soul, the Tempter suggested
that prayer was not for any use in his case ; that it
could do him no good, because he had rejected the
Mediator, by whom all prayers come with acceptance
to God the Father, — and without whom no prayer can
come into his presence. The most vexatious doubts
sprang from this new root of bitterness. The very
abundance of the grace of Christ seemed to prove an
aggravation of the guilt of his rejection of Him.
The fearful thought of his heart, " Let Him go if He
426 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
will " returned upon him in all the darkness of its
despairing agony. "Now, therefore, you are severed
from Him," the voice kept echoing within him. " You
have severed yourself from Him. Behold, then, His
goodness, — but yourself to be no partaker of it. " " Oh ! "
thought I, " what have I lost ! what have I parted with !
what has disinherited my poor soul ! Oh, 'tis sad
to be destroyed by the grace and mercy of God ; to
have the Lamb, the Saviour, turn lion and destroyer
(Eev. vi.) By such strange and unusual assaults of
the Tempter his soul was "like a broken vessel, driven
as with the winds." A deep and pathetic gloom settled
upon him. What touching tenderness in this picture
which he draws of himself ! " One day I walked to a
neighbouring town, and sat down upon a settle in the
street, and fell into a very deep pause about the most
fearful state my sin had brought me to ; and after long
musing, I lifted up my head, but methought I saw as
if the sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to
give light ; and as if the very stones in the street and
tiles upon the houses did bend themselves against me.
O how happy now was every creature over I was ! for
they stood fast and kept their station, but I was gone
and lost."
But this was about the crisis of his misery. For as
"breaking out into the bitterness of his soul," he
heaved a sigh, " How can God comfort such a wretch? "
a voice, as if in echo, replied to him, " This sin is not
unto death." He was filled with admiration at the fit-
ness and unexpectedness of this sentence ; the " power,
and sweetness, and light, and glory, that came with it,
also, were marvellous." He was lifted for the time out
of doubt, and gradually, though still with many strug-
gles and some relapses, he regained composure of mind.
BUNYAN. 427
Voices of comfort wereheard by Mm — as formerly voices
of woe had rung in his ears. At one time he retired
to rest with the quieting assurance, " I have loved thee
with an everlasting love." Next morning when he
awaked, " it was fresh upon his soul," and he believed
it. Again, when renewed doubts assailed him as to
whether the blood of Christ was sufficient to save his
soul, the words sounded suddenly within his heart,
" He is able." " Methought this word able was spoke
loud unto me — it showed a great word — it seemed to
be writ in great letters." Thus he went on for many
weeks, " sometimes comforted and sometimes torment-
ed." Upon the whole, he made advance. The dark-
ness cleared away more and more as his mind dwelt
upon the promises of Scripture, and he came to under-
stand the harmony of their message in his behalf as
a poor sinner. " And now remained only the hinder
part of the tempest, for the thunder was gone beyond
me, only some drops did still remain that now and
then would fall upon me." They were but drops ; and
then there came " clear shining after the rain." As he
was passing into the field one day, still with some dashes
in his conscience, fearing lest yet all was not right, sud-
denly this sentence fell upon his soul, " Thy righteous-
ness is in heaven ; " and therewith he saw, with the eyes
of his soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand, and saw,
moreover, that it was not his good frame of mind that
made his righteousness better, nor yet his bad frame
that made his righteousness worse, for " his righteous-
ness was Jesus Christ himself," the same yesterday,
to-day, and for ever. " Now," he adds, in rejoicing
language, " did my chains fall off my legs indeed ; I
was loosened from my afflictions and irons ; my temp-
tations also fled away. . . . 'Twas glorious to me to
428 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
see His exaltation, and tlie wortli and prevalency of all
His benefits ; and that because now I could look from
myself to Him, and would reckon that all those graces
that now were green on me were yet like those cracked
groats and fourpence-halfpennies that rich men carry
in their purses, when their gold is in their trunks at
home ! In Christ my Lord and Saviour. Now Christ
was all ; all my righteousness, all my sanctification,
and all my redemption."
The full and perfect truth of justification by faith
was now owned by Bunyan, and gave him a sure
ground of confidence such as he had not hitherto felt.
He realised the mystery of union with the Son of God
and all the blessings of his representative character ;
and his mind turned from the distractions of his own
spiritual state to rest with assurance on the great work
of Christ for him. He felt himself, through his living
union with Christ, to be truly a sharer in this work,
whose perfection constituted the certainty of his salva-
tion. " For if he and I were one," he says, " then his
righteousness was mine, his merits mine, his victory
also mine. Now, could I see myself in heaven and
earth at once. In heaven by my Christ, by my head,
by my righteousness and life, though on earth by
body or person. Now, I saw Christ Jesus was looked
upon of God ; and should also be looked upon as that
common or public person in whom all the whole body
of his elect are always to be considered and reckoned ;
that we fulfilled the law by him, died by him, rose
from the dead by him, got the victory over sin, death,
the devil, and hell by him ; when he died we died,
and so of his resurrection, ' Thy dead men shall live,
together with my dead body shall they arise.' " *
* Isaiah, xxvi. 19.
BUNYAN. 429
These "blessed considerations and scriptures, with
many of a like nature," were made henceforth to
" spangle " in his eyes ; and from this time, although
not with a uniform clearness, his soul dwelt in com-
parative " light and peace." In looking back upon the
dark way of his temptations, he ascribed them espe-
cially to two causes — a want of vigilance in prayer —
and a too material trust in God. He had besought God,
on one occasion, to interpose to save his wife from
pain, and having received, as he supposed, an answer
to his prayer, he was led to " tempt God," by relying
upon his interpositions after such a manner. Bitter as
had been his experience, he believed that it brought
him many advantages. Beyond doubt it did. The
wonderful sense that he ever afterwards had of "the
blessing and glory of God and his beloved Son "— the
" glory of the holiness of God breaking his heart in
pieces " — the insight which he acquired into the mean-
ing of the Scriptures, and especially the nature of its
promises, and further into the " heights and depths "
of grace and love and mercy — " great sins drawing
out great grace" — all this sprang as precious fruit
from his bitter trial — fruit unto righteousness and life
everlasting.
This happy change in Bunyan's condition was fol-
lowed by his admission to fellowship with " the people
of God at Bedford." He joined Gifford's congregation,
and was openly baptised by him, probably in the river
Ouse, although he himself says nothing of the fact.
It is somewhat singular, as Mr Philip, his most co-
pious biographer, points out, that he does not dwell
upon the subject of baptism at all in connection
with his admission to the society of the Baptists. He
speaks of the Lord's Supper, and mentions that the
430 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
scripture, " Do this in remembrance of me," was
made a very precious word unto him, " for by it the
Lord did come down upon my conscience with the
discovery of his death for my sins, and as I then felt
did, as if he plunged me in the virtue of the same."
He speaks also of the temptations which still pursued
him — how they fastened upon this ordinance, which at
the first had been such a source of comfort ; but he
says nothing of his baptism : it does not seem to have
occupied any Dnpoii;ant place in his spiritual history ;
the strange drama of his temptations did not find in
it any centre of interest or attraction. Bunyan be-
came a Baptist, in fact, more from accidental associa-
tion than anytliing else. He had found the truth
among the poor men and women of the " water-bap-
tism way," as he called it — and therefore he embraced
this way ; but from the very depth and sincerity of
his spiritual nature, he rose far above the mere for-
malities of the sect, and did not hesitate, with an
unsparing hand, to point out their narrowness and
prejudices when he saw occasion.
About this time he fell into some sickness. The
distress of mind that he had undergone, combined, per-
haps, with his wandering and unsettled life, terminated
in this natural result. A nervous system so highly
strung as his could not but suffer from the extremes
of depression and joy which had agitated him. The
very delicacy and sensitiveness of nervous organisation
which made such extremes familiar to him — and out of
which grew the vivid impressions which filled his spi-
ritual imagination — made him, at the same time, liable
to the weakness and disease springing from over-excite-
ment. We are not surprised, therefore, that he was
suddenly and violently seized with what seemed con-
BUNYAN. 431
sumption. His life appeared in danger, and he set
himself to examine seriously into his state and condi-
tion for the future. As he did this, the black troop of
his sins came flocking into his mind, and his former
state of despair was wellnigh returning upon him ; but
he was now too fully instructed in the truth to jdeld
to the apprehensions that assailed him. His free justi-
fication in Christ came as a reviving thought in the
midst of his apprehensions: "Ye are justified freely by
this grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus." * " Oh, what a turn these words made upon me !
Now was I as one awakened out of some troublesome
sleep and dream ; and listening to this heavenly sen-
tence, I was as if I had heard it thus spoken to me :
' Sinner, thou thinkest that because of thy sins and in-
firmities I cannot save thy soul ; but behold my Son is
by me, and upon him I look and not on thee, and shall
deal with thee according as I am pleased with him.' At
this I was greatly enhghtened in my mind, and made
to understand that God could justify a sinner at any
time ; it was but his looking upon Christ, and imparting
of his benefits to us, and the word was forthwith done.
And as I was thus in a muse, that scripture also came
with great power upon my spirit, ' Not by works of
righteousness that we have done, but according to his
mercy he hath saved us.' Now was I got high. I
saw myself within the arms of grace and mercy, and
though I was before afraid to think of a dying hour,
yet now I said, 'Let me die.' Now death was lovely
and beautiful in my sight, for I saw we shall never
live indeed till we be gone to the other world. Oh !
methought this life is but a slumber in comparison
with that above."
* Rom. iii. 24.
432 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
This elevation of spirit lasted till another severe fit
of illness seized him. His depression returned with
this renewed attack. The terrors of death and of judg-
ment again seized his startled imagination, and he felt
himself already descending into the pit as one dead
before death came. But the words of the angel carry-
ing Lazarus into Abraham's bosom, " So shall it be
with thee when thou dost leave this world," sweetly
revived him and helped him to hope in God. The
text, " 0 death where is thy sting, O grave where is
thy victory?" fell with joyful weight upon his mind.
Suddenly he became well. He felt his strength grow
as his mind settled into calmness. The evil spirit which
had so long troubled him was not entirely gone ; but
he was rapidly rising above it. Once more a cloud of
great darkness hid from him the face of God ; but it
was only a passing one. After some three or four
days, as he was sitting by the fire he suddenly felt the
words to sound in his heart, " I must go to Jesus ; "
and at this his darkness fled away, and the blessed
things of heaven once more stood clear in his view.
He was for a little uncertain as to the words of encou-
ragement, and in his dilemma appealed to his wife :
" Wife," he said, " is there ever such a scripture, * I
must go to Jesus.'" She said she could not tell. But
as he stood musing, there came "bolting in" upon
him the passage, " And to an innumerable company of
angels," * and he felt satisfied and rejoiced. Often
afterwards this passage occurred to him, and brought
him strength and peace.
After Bunyan had been for some years connected
with the Baptist congregation in Bedford, he began to
take a part in their proceedings. His earnestness,
* Heb. xii. 22.
I BUNYAN. 433
mental vivacity, and gifts of expression, soon pointed
liim out as fitted for the work of the ministry. "After
1 had been about five or six years awakened," he says,
" and helped myself to see both the want and worth
of Jesus Christ our Lord, and also enabled to venture
my soul upon Him, some of the most able among the
saints with us — I say the most able for judgment and
holiness of life — as they conceived — did perceive that
God had counted me worthy to understand something
of His will in His holy and blessed Word, and had
given me utterance, in some measure, to express what
I saw to others for edification : therefore they desired
me — and that with much earnestness — that I would
be willing sometimes to take in hand in one of the
meetings to speak a word of exhortation unto them ; the
which, though at the first it did much dash and abash
my spirit, yet being still by them desired and entreat-
ed, I consented to their request, and did twice, at
two several assemblies (but in private), though with
much weakness and infirmity, discover my gift amongst
them, at which they not only seemed to be, but did
frequently protest as in the sight of the great God,
they were both affected and comforted, and gave
thanks to the Father of mercies for the grace bestowed
on me."
Finally, in 1656, "after solemn prayer, with fasting,
he was set apart to the more ordinary and public
preaching of the word." He felt deeply the solemnity
of the work to which he had devoted himself, and was
in no hurry to enter upon it. After his first attempts
he went into the country and addressed small audi-
ences there, privately, for he " durst not make use of
his gift in an open way ;" but gradually the con-
sciousness of his vocation grew upon him, and he felt
2 E
434 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEAD 5RS.
a " secret pricking forward thereto." It could not be
otherwise. Gifts such as Bunyan's could not be hid ;
and soon he began to preach openly throughout the
district around Bedford, the Gospel " that God had
showed him in his Holy Word of Truth." Unimportant
as his position had hitherto been, something would
seem to have been known of his history and the won-
derful experiences of which he had been the subject, for
he tells that when the country understood that the
profane tinker had become a preacher, " they came in
to hear the word by hundreds, and that from all parts."
God gave him success, for he had not preached long
before " some began to be touched and greatly afflicted
in their minds at the apprehension of the greatness of
their sin, and of their need of Jesus Christ."
The account which Bunyan gives of his preaching
sufficiently explains his success. He tells us that he
" preached what he felt." His own experience made
the substance of his sermons, and we can understand
what life and power this gave to them. The terrors of
the law, and the sense of sin, had lain heavily upon his
conscience. He had felt " smartingly " what it is to
dwell without God and without hope in the world ;
and he " declared that under which his own poor soul
did groan and tremble to astonishment." " I went my-
self in chains to preach to them in chains ; and car-
ried that fire in my own conscience that I persuaded
them to be aware of" This was the main burden of his
preaching for two years. He cried out against men's
sins, and their fearful state because of them. Then
after this, as he himself advanced in knowledge, and-
peace, and comfort, through Christ, he altered his style ;
"for still," he says, " I preached what I saw and felt, .
Now, therefore, I did much labour to hold with Jesus.;
BUNYAN". 435
Christ in all his offices, relations, and benefits unto the
world, and did strive also to discover and remove their
false supports and props on which the world doth both
lean, and by them fall and perish. On these things
also I staid as long as on the other. After this God
let me into something of the mystery of the unioa of
Christ ; wherefore that I discovered, and showed to
them also."
Bunyan's heart, in short, was in his preaching. He
uttered in living phrase his own warm feelings. He
spake as he was moved. He was possessed by the
truths which he addressed to others. It was not
enough for him to say, " I believe and am sure ;" but
he felt " more than sure " of what was life and joy and
peace to his own soul. Everything else to him was
but shado-wy and dim in comparison with the realities
of sin and salvation, of wrath and redemption through
the blood of Christ. He lived only in the conscious-
ness of the life of faith, and his preaching was the mere
expression of his constant thoughts and feelings. And
so it touched and awakened the common minds he ad-
dressed. The vivid extempore words of such a man, —
coming right from his heart, — were exactly those most-
likely to arrest and impress the audiences that gathered
round him. He says, " I never endeavoured to, nor durst,
make use of other men's lines (though I condemn not
all that do), for I verily thought, and found by expe-
rience, that what was taught me by the word and Spirit
of Christ, could be spoken, maintained, and stood to by
the soundest and best established conscience. ... I
have observed that a word cast in by the by hath done
more execution in a sermon than all that was spoken
besides. Sometimes also, when I have thought I did
do good, then I did the most of all ; and at other times,
436 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
when I thouglit I sliould catcli them, I have fished
for nothing."
He was not of a disputatious turn. In his preach-
ing he kept clear of such things as were " in dispute
among the samts." He had too large a soul to take
delight in mere word-splitting, and on different occa-
sions he showed himself above the contentious spirit
of his age. But strangely enough it was in a contro-
versial capacity that he was destined to make his first
appearance as an author. In 1656 some itinerant
preachers of Quakerism had come to Bedford, — and in
the parish church, called the " Steeple House," had
lield a disputation on the subject of their doctrines.
They found in Bunyan not only a sturdy but an intel-
ligent and able opponent. Quaker spiritualism — lively
and mystic as his own spiritual fancies were — had no
charm for him. It seemed to him to destroy altogether
the reality of the Gospel salvation, to take away an
outward " Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, fulfilling
the law, dying without the gate of Jerusalem as a
sacrifice for sin, as rising again, as ascending into and
interceding in heaven, and as coming from heaven
again in his flesli to judge the world." No one was
more able than Bunyan to appreciate what was good
in Quakerism — its deep inward sense of the Divine —
the necessity of Christ ivithin the heart, of which it
said so much — but he had also a very strong and
even vehement feeling of what he deemed its serious
errors. A Christ not merely in him but without him ;
a Saviour for him ; and in whose substantive work
on earth, " reconciling the world unto God," he knew
bimself to be safe — this was to him of the very
essence of the truth, for which he was called upon to
contend.
BUNYAN. 437
With this view lie published his first treatise, under
the title, " Some Gospel Truths, opened according to
the Scriptures, on the Divine and Human Nature of
Christ Jesus : His coming into the world : His right-
eousness, death, resurrection, ascension, intercession,
and second coming to judgment, plainly demonstrated
and proved." The book contains a very sensible and
well-reasoned argument for the divinity of Christ. The
question is argued from prophecy, — from the works of
Christ,— from the whole testimony of Scripture, some-
times not very critically, — yet always reasonably, —
and in a very sound and intelligent spirit throughout.
Nothing could show better Bunyan's strong and sober
judgment under all the enthusiasm of passionate devo-
tion that animated him. It proves also his diligence
as a student of scripture. He misses almost nothing
bearing upon his subject, and if he does not penetrate
below the surface, or bring the old texts into new
combinations, he yet arrays and expounds them in
their accepted meanings, with an impressive and con-
sistent force. In conclusion, he replies to the Quaker
objections with great acuteness and success. Admit-
ting to the full the necessity of a Christ within, this
is not, he contends, to be held in opposition to a Christ
without, but in strict and necessary connection there-
with ; " for where the spirit of Christ is in truth, that
spirit causeth the soul to look to the Christ that was
born of the Virgin for all justification. And, indeed,
here is my life — namely, the birth of this man, the
righteousness of this man, the death and resurrection
of this man, the ascension and intercession of this
man for me, and the second coming of this man to
judge .the world in righteousness. I say here is mT/
life — if I see this by faith without me, through the
438 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
operation of tlie Spirit within me, I am safe, I am at
peace, I am comforted, I am encouraged ; and I know
that my comfort, peace, and encouragement is true, and
given me from heaven by the Father of mercies, through
the Son of the Virgin Mary, who is the way to the Fa-
ther of mercies, who is able to save to the uttermost all
that come to the Father by Him. This is the rock,
sinner, upon which if thou be built, the gates of hell,
nor Eanter, Quaker, sin, law, death, no, nor the devil
himself, shall ever be able to prevail against thee."
Controversial as the treatise is, its language is, upon
the whole, temperate. It is the language of one more
anxious to establish truth . than to refute error. It
would not, however, have been characteristic of the
age if it had been altogether free from rudeness and
extravagance of epithet, and harshness of feeling. It
was a customary device of controversy then to open
the attack in the title — to make it as sharp and incisive
as possible ; and Bunyan wields this weapon with a
hearty goodwill. His secondary title condenses more
vituperation than any other part of his book. It runs
thus : — " Answers to several Questions, with profitable
Directions to stand fast in the Doctrine of Jesus, the
Son of Mary, against those blustering Storms of the
Devil's Temptations which do at this Day, like so
many Scorpions, break loose from the Bottomless Pit
to bite and torment those that have not tasted the
Virtue of Jesus by the Eevelatiou of the Spirit of
God."
The Quakers felt the force of Bunyan's attack ; and
one of their leaders, Edward Burroughs, a " son of
thunder and consolation," published a reply to it. The
reply was entitled, " The True Faith of the Gospel of
T^eace, contended for in the Spirit of Meekness ; and
BUNYAN. 439
the mystery of Salvation (Christ within the hope of
Glory), vindicated in the Spirit of Love against the
Secret Opposition of John Bunyan, a professed Min-
ister in Bedfordshire." Bunyan had put all his fierce-
ness into his title ; and after his talk of scorpions, had
showTi little heat or abuse of language ; but Burroughs,
all gentleness in the title, breaks out into foaming
wrath in his text. His words, " soft as dew, or as the
droppings of a summer cloud," portend a storm, such
as no doubt won for him his admiring appellation of
" Son of Thunder." He thus inveighs— " Your spirit
is tried, and your generation is read at large, and your
stature and countenance is clearly described to me to
be of the stock of Ishmael and of the seed of Cain,
whose line reacheth unto the murthering priests, Scribes,
and Pharisees. Oh, thou blind priest, whom God hath
confounded in thy language, the design of the devil in
deceiving souls is thy own, and I turn it back to thee.
Thou directest altogether to a thing without disposing
the light within and worshipping the name Mary in thy
imagination, and knowest not Him who was before the
world was, in whom alone is salvation, and in no other.
If we should diligently search we should find thee,
through feigned words, through covetousness, making
■merchandise of souls, loving the wages of unrighteous-
ness. The Lord rebuke thee, thou unclean spirit, who
hast falsely accused the innocent to clear thyself from
guilt. . . . Thy weapons are slanders, and thy refuge
is lies ; and thy work is confused, and hath hardly
gained a name in Babylon's record."
Burroughs was a man of consideration in his party ;
and in reality, as his letters to his family are said to
prove,* a man of tenderness as well as of boldness.
* Philip's Life of Bvunyan, p. 238. . .
440 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
He did not hesitate, as others of his sect, to remon-
strate with the great Protector in the day of his power.
Tt is obvious, however, that he showed as little sense
as temper in dealing with Bunyan. Humble as the
author of Gospel Truths Opened was, and with but a
modest opinion of himself, he was not to be silenced
by mere loudness of tone and stormy language. He
replied accordingly with great advantage, quietly ex-
horting his adversary to preserve a more sober spirit,
and some appearance at least of moderation. He tells
him that he fights against the saints " with a parcel of
scolding expressions." He then returns to his charge
against the Quakers. Their "inner light" he argues,
is nothing more than conscience. " That light where-
with Christ, as He is God, hath lightened every one that
Cometh into the world, is the soul of man, which is the
life of the body, and yet itself is but a creature. This
creature hath one faculty of its own nature, called con-
science, which hath its place in the soul, where it is a
judge to discern of things good or bad. Now, this con-
science, this nature itself, because it can control and
chide them for sin, therefore must it be idolised and
made a God of . . . Conscience is not the spirit of
Christ, but a poor dunghill creature in comparison
with the spirit of Christ." He maintains, in answer
to Burroughs' charge of misrepresentation, that the
Quakers were in their principles substantially the same
as the Banters, and waxes somewhat bitterly satirical
in maintaining this point. To the reproach- of covet-
ousness and making merchandise of souls, which Bur-
roughs had recklessly urged against him, he replied, as
he well might, in a high, yet patient and well-pos-
sessed spirit. " Friend, dost thou speak thus as from
thy own knowledge, or did any other body tell thee
BUNYAN. 441
SO ? However, that spirit that led thee out of this
way is a lying spirit. For though I be poor, and of
no repute in the world as to outward things, yet this
grace I have learned by the example of the Apostle, to
preach the truth ; and also to work with my hands
both for mine own living and for those that are with
me, when I have opportunity. And I trust that the
Lord Jesus, who hath helped me to reject the wages of
unrighteousness hitherto, will also help me still, so
that I shall distribute that which God hath given me
freely, and not for filthy lucre's sake."
Bunyan turned from controversy gladly to preaching
and the more practical work of the ministry. A truly
apostolical zeal animated him to carry the tidings of
salvation which had made his own heart joyful to
those who were living without any profession of re-
ligion. His great desire was "to get into the dark-
est places of the country, even amongst those people
that were farthest off profession." He laboured with
unceasing earnestness to see the fruits of his ministry,
and if it proved fruitful, nothing else disturbed him
— no opposition daunted him. The "doctors and
priests vehemently opposed him ; " but he quietly
pursued his calling, giving no heed to their railing.
Sometimes, indeed, in the very midst of his preach-
ing, his old darkness came upon him. The old spirit
of fear and evil suggestion still visited him, and at
times would so violently assault him with thoughts
of blasphemy, that he was prompted to utter them
aloud before the congregation. Occasionally, when he
had begun to preach with much clearness, evidence,
and liberty of speech, before ending he would become
" so blinded and estranged from all that he had been
saying, that he did not know or remember what he
442 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
had been about ; as if my head," he says, " had been
in a bag all the time of my exercise. " Then he
would be sometimes lifted up with his apparent suc-
cess, and some " sharp and piercing sentence," as that
respecting " sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal,"*
would ring in his heart, and bring him to the dust of
humility.
When these spiritual temptations failed to move
him, and his ministry only grew and prospered the
more, because of his constant sense of his spiritual
weakness and his protracted discipline, his adversary
" tried another way," which was perhaps still harder
for Bunyan to bear, although his unflagging spirit and
the testimony of a good conscience no less supported
him here. Malicious and ignorant slanders were put
in circulation against him, as that he was a " witch,
a Jesuit, a highwayman, and the like." Worst of all,
and with the boldest confidence, it was reported that
he had his "misses, whores, and bastards — yea, two
wives at once, and the like." He professed to glory
in these slanders as characteristics of his Christian
profession, even " as an ornament ;" but they were not
the less painful to his sensitive spirit, and they roused
him both to unwonted indignation and protest. He
calls them "fools and knaves" who have thus dared
to slander him, and appeals confidently to his estab-
lished character in refutation of the calumnies. "My
foes," he says, " have missed their mark in this their
shooting at me. I am not the man. I wish that
they themselves be guiltless. If all the fornicators
and adulterers in England were hanged up by the
neck till they be dead, John Bunyan, the object of
* " Shall I be proud because I am a sounding brass ? Is it so nauch to
be a fiddle?" he says, characteristically.
BUNYAN. 443
tlieir envy, would be still alive and well. I know not
whether there be such a thing as a woman breathing
under the copes of the heavens, but by their apparel,
their children, or by common fame, except my wife.
And in this I admire the wisdom of God that he made
me shy of women from my first conversion until now.
These know, and can also bear me witness, with whom
I have been most intimately concerned, that it is a
rare thing to see me carry it pleasantly towards a
woman. The common salutation of women I abhor —
it is odious to me in whomsoever I see it. Their com-
pany alone I cannot away with ; I seldom so much as
touch a woman's hand, for I think these things are not
so becoming me. When I have seen good men salute
those women that they have visited, or that have visited
them, I have at times made my objection against it ;
and when they have answered that it was but a piece
of civility, I have told them it is not a comely sight ;
some indeed have urged the holy kiss, but then I have
asked why they made baulks, — why they did salute the
most handsome, and let the ill-favoured go. Thus, how
laudable soever such things have been in tlie eyes of
others, they have been unseemly in my sight."
There is a charming simplicity in this confession.
No one could doubt, after such a statement, the clear-
minded honesty and guileless straightness of heart of
the tinker preacher. The touch as to " making baulks,"
on the bestowal of the holy kiss, possesses an irresist-
ible naivety, more like the innocent prattle of a child
than the maturely recorded experiences of a man.
Bunyan was, indeed, and remained, a child m heart.
The simplest rules and plainest instincts of duty
always guided him, and left his motives and conduct
intelligible as the daylight.
444 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
He had been preaching about four years, when the
Eestoration came, and brought serious consequences
to him, as to many others. He had been in difficulty
before. The book of the Baptist congregation, pre-
served at Bedford, bears an entry to the effect that,
"on the 25th December 1657, the Church resolved to
set apart a day for seeking counsel of God what to do
with respect to the indictment against brother Bunyan,
at the Assizes, for preaching at Eaton." He has not
himself said anything of this indictment; and there
is every reason to suppose that it was not prosecuted.
Probably it was some expression of the dislike of the
Presbyterians towards him ; the " doctors and priests,
who opened their mouths wide against him " when he
began his ministry ; but however strongly they might
desire to silence him, this was not so easily accom-
plished, while the firm, but tolerant, hand of Crom-
well still held the reins of power.
He was among the first, however, who experienced
the persecuting effects of the Eestoration. The inof-
fensiveness of his life, and the comparative obscurity of
his ministry, might have been supposed a sufficient
shield to Bunyan ; but his plain speaking, and down-
right sincerity of character, and the popularity of his
ministry among the lower orders, made him obnoxious
to local vigilance and jealousy. He became a victim
to these, rather than to any direct act of vengeance
on the part of the Government. As yet, in fact, the
Government had taken no steps to control the liberty
of preaching. The Act of Uniformity, and the Con-
venticle Act, were still in the distance. But certain
old acts against unordained preachers were sufficient
to enable the Justices of Bedford to take steps against
him.
BUNYAN. 445
He lias himself told us the story of his seizure, and
the reasons which induced him to risk himself, not-
withstanding the dissuasions of his friends. He was
engaged to preach at " Samsell, by Harliugton, in
Bedfordshire." A warrant was out against him, issued
by Justice Wingate ; and, just as he had met with
his friends, and they were ready to begin their exer-
cise,— "Bibles in their hands," — the constable came
in. Bunyan might have made his escape, and was
advised to do so ; but he thought that "if he should
run and make an escape," it would be "of ill savour
in the country ; " his conduct might prove a " discou-
ragement to the whole body." He had no vain am-
bition to be a martyr, but he honestly looked ujjon
himself as an example to his co-rehgionists, and, hav-
ing weighed the whole matter in his mind, he resolved
not to fly.
He was brought before the Justice next morning ;
and the matter would have ended easily, if he would
have permitted his sureties to become bound that
he would cease from preaching. But to this he
would on no account consent. "Wingate urged that
it was against the law for him to preach, and that
he should confine himself to his calling. He replied
that he could follow his calling and preach too, and
the object of his meetings was only " to instruct and
counsel people to forsake their sins and close in with
Christ, lest they miserably perish." The Justice with-
drew to make out a "mittimus" to send him to jail,
and, while he was absent, one Dr Lindale, whom he
calls an " old enemy of the truth," came in, and fell
to taunting him " with many reviling terms." Lin-
dale appears to have been a beneficed clergyman of
Bedford ; and we see in him the natural scorn of the
446 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
cavalier diurchman for the preaching tinker. They
enter into a railing dispute about the latter's right
to preach ; — Bunyan pleading cleverly the text, " As
every man hath received the gift, even so let him
minister the same ; " and Lindale, throwing in his
teeth the case of "Alexander the coppersmith, whO;
did much oppose and disturb the Apostles," " aiming
'tis like at me," he adds naively, "because I was a
tinker." "You are one of those Scribes and Phari-
sees who for a pretence make long prayers, to devour
widows' houses," urged Lindale. Bunyan retorted
that "if he had got no more by preaching and pray-
ing than he had done, he would not be so rich as
he was."
The interview is painful, but characteristic ; the
impudent dignity of the churchman, the complacency
of the Puritan. In aU fairness, we cannot accent Bun-
yan's idea of Lindale, any more than Lindale's idea
of Bunyan. We know the latter's worth and sim-
plicity, notwithstanding that he seemed to Lindale a
mere fanatical rogue ; and although Lindale was pro-
bably no model of an apostolical divine, we have
no reason to think that he was a mere enemy to reli-
gion, a mere " Hate-good." Bunyan's most copious
biographer* has not been able to bring any facts
against him beyond those that appear in the narra-
tive, although he has not failed to apply to him op-
probrious language.
As Bunyan was being carried off to prison, some
of his friends appeared, and made another effort to
obtain his release. He was led back before Wingate ;
and another Justice, of the name of Foster, makes
his appearance, of whom we have a very singular,
* Philip.
BUNTAN, 447
and not very intelligible, portrait. " When I came to
the Justice again," he says, " there was Mr Foster
of Bedford, who, coming out of another room, and
seeing of me by the light of the candle, — for it was
dark night when I came thither, — he said unto me,
'Who is there? John Buny&n?' with such seeming af-
fection, as if he would have leaped on my neck and
kissed me, which made me somewhat wonder that
such a man as he, with Avhom I had so little acquaint-
ance, and, besides, that had ever been a close opposer
of the ways of God, should carry himself so full of
love to me ; but afterwards, when I saw what he did,
it caused me to remember those sayings, 'Their
tongues are smoother than oil, but their words are
drawn swords.' When I had answered him that,
blessed be God, I was well, he said, ' What is the occa-
sion of your coming here?' or to that purpose. To
whom I answered that I was at a meeting of people
a little way off, intending to speak a word of exhorta-
tion to them ; but the Justice hearing thereof, said I,
was pleased to send his warrant to fetch me before
him."
And then follows a long altercation between them.
Foster was evidently no friend of Bunyan, but neither
does he seem to have cherished towards him any wil-
ful hostility ; he had' rather wished to cajole him, and
have the matter hushed up. He was apparently an
ordinary specimen of the crafty civic politician, who
did not wish the peace disturbed if he could help
it ; his conduct is that of the self-important provin-
cial dignitary, who had no dislike to the preacher,
save in so far as he interfered with his magisterial
responsibility. When he found that he could not
move Bunyan's calm sense of duty, he was naturally;
448 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
angered, and concurred in the sentence to send liim
to prison. His friends made still another effort, five
days later, to get him delivered on bail, but this
also was unsuccessful "Whereat," he says, " I was
not at all daunted, but rather glad." A spirit like
this was not likely to yield before the Justices of
Bedford.
After he had lain in prison about seven weeks,
the Quarter Sessions came to be held in Bedford. A
formal indictment was preferred against him, and he
was tried before five Justices, whose names he has pre-
served. The indictment charges him with " devilishly
and perniciously abstaining from coming to church to
hear divine service," and with being " a common up-
holder of several unlawful meetings and conventicles,
to the great disturbance and distraction of the good
subjects of this kingdom, contrary to the laws of our
Sovereign Lord the King," &c. The only interest of
the trial arises from the glimpses which it gives us
of the popular religious sentiments among Churchmen
and Puritans, at this stage of the controversy. The
discussion turned in the first instance on Bunyan's
opposition to the Church Service, and especially the
Book of Common Prayer. He is very firm and ready,
if not very enlightened or comprehensive, in his argu-
ments. Justice Keeling, his chief disputant, presents
a singular mixture of sense and ignorance. To Bun-
yan's Scripture texts he can find little or nothing to
say, but he responds with heartiness to the common
sense of some of his remarks ; and although rude and
offensive in his language, he does not appear unjust
or violent beyond the terms of the law. He was a
fair specimen, probably, of a royalist magistrate of the
time — ignorant and somewhat insolent, but good-na-
BUNYAN. 449
tured and indifferent,— confounding all religion, except
that of the Prayer-Book, with fanaticism and sedition.
Bimyan was pressed to declare his reason for not
attending the service of the Church. He pleaded that
he "did not find it commanded in the Word of God."
Keeling urged that he was commanded to pray. The
Puritan admitted this, but said he was not bound to pray
by the Common Prayer Book. The prayers in it "were
such as were made by men, and not by the motions of
the Holy Ghost within our hearts." A man can only
pray "through a sense of those things which he wants,
which sense is begotten by the Spirit." The Justice
owned the truth of this, but maintained that it was pos-
sible to pray "with the Spirit, and with the Book of Com-
mon Prayer too." He further defended the Prayer-Book
as warrantable, "after our Lord's example, who taught
his disciples to pray ; and that as one man may con-
vince another of sin, so prayers made by men and read
over may be good to teach and help men to pray."
Bunyan replied with the text, " The Spirit helpeth our
infirmities." So far Keeling conducts the argument
fairly enough, and not without force. There is a rough
sense in many of his statements. By-and-by, however,
he falls, along with his brother Justices, into mere
railing. Wearied probably wdth Bunyan' s pertinacity,
he appears to lose his temper, and to the pious ejacu-
lations of the Puritan, retorts, " This is pedlar's French
— leave off your canting."
The result was that Bimyan was sentenced to three
months' imprisonment, with a warning that if he did
not cease his preaching he would be banished, and if
found afterwards within the realm, that he should
" stretch by the neck for it." This was all that the
Eestoration had to say to men like him, and it was
2 F
450 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
a somewhat sorry saying. Imprisonment — and then
banishment — and then hanging — if you do not con-
form to the parish church. It met happily a "spirit
of power," not to be daunted even by such threats.
" If I was out of prison to-day," replied Bunyan, " I
would preach the Gospel again to-morrow, by the
help of God."
Yet, with all his boldness, he felt deeply the pain-
fulness of his lot. Parting with his wife and chil-
dren Avas " like pulling the flesh from his bones ; "
and especially the thought of his poor blind child,
who " lay nearer to his heart than all beside," made
him cry out bitterly — "Oh ! the thoughts of the hard-
ship I thought my poor blind one might go under,
would break my heart to pieces. Poor child, thought
I, what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion
in this world ! Thou must be beaten, must beg, suffer
hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities,
though I cannot now endure the wind should blow
upon thee. But yet, recalling myself, thought I, I
must venture you all with God, though it goeth to
the quick to leave you. Oh ! I saw in this condition
I was as a man who was pulling down his house upon
the head of his wife and children ; yet, thought I,
I must do it — I must do it."
When Bunyan had been in prison three months an-
other effort was made to induce him to submit to the law,
as interpreted by the Justices. They sent to him the
Clerk of the Peace, Mr Cobb, to reason with him, and
to endeavour to gain his assent to terms which would
admit of his being liberated. This seems to have been
done on their part in perfect good faith ; there is no
evidence of a wish to inflict illegal punishment upon
him, Paide and violent as they had been when heated
BUNYAN. 451
in altercation witli him — prompt and liarsli as liad been
their vigilance in making his arrest — the magistrates
of Bedford were not yet without some relentings, or at
least desires to be quit of a troublesome business.
They must not be judged unfairly. The Clerk of
the Peace also, who acted as their agent on this occa-
sion, was apparently a reasonable and kindly man —
really anxious to open up a door for his escape
from prison, if he only could be brought to yield a
little. It was conceded to liim that he might address
his neighbours in private, x^i'ovided only that he did
not call together an assembly of the people ; but
he would not give up any part of his freedom, and
urged that his sole end in meeting with others was to
do as much good as he could. It was replied by Cobb
that others urged the same in their unlawful meetings,
such as had issued in the late insurrection in London.*
Bunyan declared that he abhorred such practices, and
pleaded his readiness to manifest his loyalty both by
word and deed. Their argument came to nothing.
Bunyan insisted on his right of preaching freely. He
would give the notes of all his sermons, to prevent
occasion of suspicion as to his doctrine ; for he seri-
ously desired to " live quietly in his country, and to
submit to the present authority ; " but he would not
purchase his freedom by any promise of public silence.
He would lie in jail rather. " The law," he said, "hath
provided two ways of obeying ; the one, to do that
which I in my conscience do believe that I am bound
to do actively ; and where I cannot obey actively, there
I am willing to lie down and to suffer what they shall
do unto me." At this his interlocutor sat still, and
* The insurrection of Venner, wliich was made the pretext of dealing
severely with the Nonconformists.
452 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
said no more, " which, wlien he had done," he adds, "I
thanked him for his civil and meek discussion with
me ; and so we parted. 0 that we might meet in
heaven ! FarewelL"
He remained in prison, under sentence of " ban-
ishment or hanging," unless he should recant. But
just as the time drew near in which he should have
" abjured, or done worse," the coronation took place ;
and, according to a royal proclamation, persons im-
prisoned and under sentence were allowed to sue for a
pardon within twelve months. This suspended any
further proceedings against him ; and when the sum-
mer assizes came on (1G61), he resolved to avail him-
self of the privilege of petitioning. His friends were
either forgetful, or possessed little influence ; and it was
left to his wife to urge his case before the judges,
which she did with a noble and pathetic dignity
which has made her memorable, and stamped her as
one of the heroines of Puritanism. She Avas his second
wife, Avhom he had married about a year before his
imprisonment. Of his former wife's death we are told
nothing. Her early influence for good upon him will
be remembered, and everything said of her suggests a
favourable impression. His second wife was " worthy
of the first" — a gentle, modest, yet intrepid woman,
whose meekness and simplicity shine forth under all
her hardiness and courage in behalf of her husband.
Sir Matthew Hale was one of the judges, and to
him Bunyan's wife iirst came with her petition. He
received her "very mildly," telling her " that he would
do her and me the best good he could ; but he feared,
he said, he could do none. " " The next day again,"
he continues his narrative, " lest they should, through
the multitude of business, forget me, we did throw
BUNYAN. 453
anotlier petition into the coacli to Judge Twisdoii, who,
wheji he had seen it, snapt her up, and angrily told
her that he was a convicted person, and could not be
released unless I would promise to preach no more.
Well, after this, she again presented another petition
to Judge Hale, as he sat upon the bench, who, as it
seemed, was willing to give her audience. Only Jus-
tice Chester being present, slipt up and said that I
was convicted in the court, and that I w^as a hot-
spirited fellow, or words to that purpose, wliereat he
(Hale) waived it, and did not meddle therewith." The
conflict between the willingness of Hale — his Avish
to do a service to the poor woman before him — and
the rude unkindness of his brother judges — the help-
lessness of the petitioner, " throwing her petition into
the coach to Judge Twisdon " as he passed — give us a
touching glimpse of the times, and of the unhappy
difficidties of honest and good men like Hale who
sought to serve the Government of the Eestoration.
It might have been supposed that his repulses would
have daunted one even so courageous as Bunyan's wife ;
but, like the woman before the august Judge, as her
husband hints, she resolved "to make another ven-
ture." As the Judges sat in the "Swan Chambers,
with many justices and gentry of the country in com-
pany together," she came before them "with abashed
face and trembling heart," yet determined, if possible,
to gain a hearing. She directed herself to Hale again,
but he told her as before that he could do her no good,
because her husband had been held as convicted on
his own statements. She continued her pleading,
urging that she had been to London, and spoken with
one of the House of Lords there, who said that her
husband's case was committed to the Judges at the
454 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
next assizes. Chester and Twisdon would hear no-
thing on the subject — the one repeating always, " He
is convicted," " It is recorded ; " and the other urging
that her husband was a "breaker of the peace." As
she spoke of " four little children,"* the heart of Hale
was touched, and he answered very mildly, say-
ing, " I tell thee, woman, seeing it is so, that they
have taken what thy husband spoke for a conviction,
thou must either apply thyself to the King, or sue out
his pardon, or get a writ of error." This was but
small comfort to the poor woman : but even so much
"chafed" Justice Chester, so that he "put off his hat,
and scratched his head for anger." Unable to prevail
with them to send for her husband that he miuht
speak for himself, which she often desired them to do,
she left in deep distress at her want of success. "I
could not but break forth into tears," she says, add-
ing, with a truly Puritanic touch, " not so much
because they were so hard-headed against me and my
husband, but to think what a sad account such poor
creatures will have to give at the coming of the Lord,
when they shall then answer for all things."
The result of all was, that Bunyan was left in prison.
Fortunately, he found a friend in his jailer, and his
imprisonment was mitigated for some time to such
an extent as to render it merely nominal. He was
permitted to go and come, and even engage in preach-
ing, as he had been accustomed. " I had by my
jailer," he says, " some liberty granted me, more than
at first, and I followed my wonted course of preach-
ing, taking all occasions that were put into my hand to
visit the people of God, exhorting them to be steadfast
in the faith of Jesus Christ, and to take heed that they
* The children of his former wife.
liUNYAN. 455
touclied not the Common Prayer, &c., but to mind the
word of God." The harshness which he encountered
seems, as in all such cases, to have hardened his pol-
emical hostility to the Church of England. The very
consciousness that he was in "bonds" for what he
considered the truth, and that his visits and preach-
ing were surreptitious, operated to intensify his zeal,
and to call forth a warmer fervour of opposition to
those from whom he suffered. His sufferino's also
served to increase his importance and influence among
his own people. Hitherto he had not been in any
sense a leader among them. His conflict with the
Quaker, Burroughs, may have given him some promi-
nence, heightened by the remarkable circumstances of
his conversion ; but it required his imprisonment, and
the intrepid defence which he made for his opinions,
to bring into full view his claims to respect and influ-
ence. It was this rising reputation in his own j)er-
suasion which, no doubt, led him to run the risk of
going to see " Christians at London," as he tells us lie
ventured to do, by the indulgence of his jailer. This
indulgence, however, cost him severely. His enemies
hearing of it threatened the jailer with expulsion from
his oftice, and his liberty Avas in consequence short-
ened, so that he " must not look out of the door." It
was charged against him that he went to London " to
plot and raise " divisions, and make insurrection, which,
"God knows," he says, "was a slander."
Bunyan certainly cannot be supposed to have had
any hand in political plots against the Government,
No man in the country was more honestly loyal. If
he had only been allowed to preach, no one was dis-
posed to live a more peaceable life. Southey has indeed
said that " the man who distinauished a handful of
456 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADEKS.
Baptists in London as the Christians of that great me-
tropolis, and who, when let out by favour from the
prison, exhorted the people of God, as he calls them, to
take heed that they touched not the Common Prayer,
was not employed in promoting unity, nor in making
good subjects, however good his intentions, however
orthodox his creed, however sincere and fervent his
piety." That may or may not be — but it is little to
the point. There is no tyranny that might not urge
such a plea. Neither Bunyan nor his co-religionists
were a whit the worse subjects on account of their
peculiar notions regarding the Prayer-Book and the
number of Christians in London. These notions — right
or wrong — had nothing to do with the civil obedience
of those that held them. Bunyan's confinement, as
Southey goes on to urge, may have proved an advan-
tage to him — it may have given leisure for his " under-
standing to repose and cool ; " but it was not the less
a gross infringement of civil liberty ; and it is but a
miserable defence of a Church and a cause that tries
to find any justification for the hardships inflicted on
the author of the Pilgrim's P7'og7rss.
He made still some further efforts at the " fol-
lowing assizes " to be released from his imprisonment.
He tried even to have his name " put into the calen-
dar among the felons, " and to " make friends of the
Judge and High Sheriff, who promised that he should
be called." His friendly jailer rendered him every
assistance he could, but all his efforts were frustrated.
He blames severely for this his quondam friend Mr
Cobb, the Clerk of the Peace, who had formerly inte-
rested himself in his behalf, or appeared to do so. It
would almost seem as if the Justices of Bedford and
their friends felt their position, and the character of
BUNYAN. 457
their legal administration, committed in Bmiyan's case ;
and that some strongly official feeling more than any-
thing else interfered with his liberation. He had been
" lawfully convicted," the Clerk of the Peace argued, as
the Justices had done, and he was, therefore, " not to
be set free except in the ordinary course of the law."
He represents Cobb as running first to the Clerk of
the Assizes, and then to the Justices, and then again to
the jailer, in case his name should get into the calen-
dar through any misrepresentation or informality, and
an opportunity for his release be ojDcned up. So it
was he was " hindered and prevented from appearing
before the Judge and left in prison."
Here he remained during . the next seven years —
years of silent but wonderful mental growth to him.
Working with his hands to support his family — making
tag-laces for his wife and children to sell* — his mind at
the same time found work for itself. His imagination
became more intensely and creatively active than it had
ever been. In the solitude of his prison he learned to
dream ; or rather, for he had always been a dreamer,
he learned to depict his dreams. He became the great
artist of that spiritual world in which he lived and
moved and had his being. Shut out from living com-
munication witJi his fellow-men, and thirsting after
sympathy with the spiritual realities — the diverse forms
of religious passion — with which he had been so con-
versant in his ministerial experience, he called them
into life around him, and peopled his solitude with
* Charles Doe, one of his friends, who visited Bunyan in prison, and
afterwards interested himself in the collection of his works, says, " I
have been witness that his own hands ministered to his and his family
necessities, making many hundred gross of long tagged laces, to fill up
the vacancies of his time, which he had learned to do for that purpose
since he had been in prison." — Memoir, iv.
458 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
tlieir breathing and active presence. From the ver}'
darkness and inactivity and solitariness of liis outward
life was born the faculty which made his inner life
bright with the conception of those beautiful and
varied characters, and that vivid imagery of incident
which compose his allegories. Had Bunyan's spiritual
zeal and imaginativeness found scope in outward
work, — had he been left practically to direct Christians
and Faithfuls and Hopefuls — to exhort the Timorous
and Doubting — and to reprove the Pliable, the Forma-
list, the Hy[)ocrite, and the Talkative, — we might never
have had the vivid pictures of these characters that
we have from his fertile pen. It was when his living
tongue could no longer reach them, when the actual
struggle to help the weak and rebuke the erring was
no longer possible to him, that his fancy fashioned in
a dream the Pilgrim's Progress, and all his creative
skill w^as called forth in depicting it. The world of
actual religious struggle w\as removed from him ; but,
as he dreamed, lo ! it was once more around him, and
he lived in it, and found his highest interest and
pleasure in it. Every form of the reality had stamped
itself on his mind, and it came forth to the touch of
his fancy true and perfect. He might be hindered
from ministering to his flock in Bedford, but none
could hinder him from ministering to the flock of his
imagination, whose necessities and difficulties — whose
hopes and fears — were as real to him as if he had lived
in visible contact with them.
Bunyan himself has told how accidentally he hit
upon his great plan. He was engaged in the com-
position of some other book — some have supposed, and
not improbably, his Grace abounding to the Chief of
Sinners, or the autobiographical narrati-\^e from which
Bu:^7TAi^. 459
we have quoted so mncli in the course of our sketch
— wheu he "fell suddenly into an allegory." Many
points of similitude between the Christian life and a
journey struck him on the instant, and he noted them
down ; the idea once started, it branched off into num-
berless illustrations, and his memory could scarcely
keep pace with the creations of his heated fancy *
There is reason to think that the Pilgrims Progress
was not the first product of his allegorical faculty,
although it first proved to him its strength. His ima-
ginative dreaming had already found scope in efforts
less happy, but which show no less strongly how natu-
rally his mind turned in this direction. The extended
sermon, entitled Tlw Holy City, or the Nno Jerusalem,
was probably the first of his writings of this kind. It
was published while he was still in prison in 1665,
and he has himself, in his " Prefatory Epistle to four
sorts of Eeaders," told us the history of its origin. The
statement gives us an interesting glimpse of his prison
life, apart from its own importance. " The occasion of
* " And thus it was : I writing of the way
And i-ace of saints, in this our Gospel daj'.
Fell suddenly into an allegory
About their journey and the way to glory.
In more than twenty things, which I set down ;
This done, I twenty more had in my crown ;
And they again began to multiply.
Like sparks that from the coals of fire do fly.
Nay then, thought I, if that you breed so fast,
I'll put you by yourselves, lest you at last
Should prove ad injirtitinn, and eat out
The book that I already am about.
Well, so I did ; but yet I did not think
To show to all the world my pen and ink
In such a mode ; I only thought to make
I knew not what ; nor did I undertake
Thereby to please my neighbour ; no, not I ;
I did it mine own self to gratify."
460 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
my first meddling with tliese matters," lie says, " was as
followeth : Upon a certain fast-day, I being together
with my brethren in our prison-chamber, they expected
that, according to our custom, something should be
spoken out of the Word for our mutual edification ;
but at that time I felt myself, it being my turn to
speak, so empty, speechless, and barren, that I thought
I should not have been able to speak among them so
much as five words of truth with life and evidence ;
but at last it so fell out that providentially I cast mine
eye upon the 11th verse of the one-and-twentieth chap-
ter of this prophecy (Eev. xxi. 11) ; upon which, when
I had considered a while, methought I perceived some-
thing of that jasper, in whose light you there find this
Holy City is to come or descend : wherefore, having got
in my eye some dim glimmerings thereof, and finding
also in my heart a desire to see further thereunto, I with
a few groans did carry my meditations to the Lord Jesus
for a blessing, which he did forthwith grant, according
to his grace ; and, helping me to set before my bre-
thren, we did all eat and were well refreshed ; and
behold also, that while I was in the distributing of it, it
so increased in my hand that of the fragments that we
left, after we had well dined, I gathered up this bas-
ketful. Methought the more I cast mine eye upon
the whole discourse the more I saw lie in it. Where-
fore setting myself to a more narrow search through
frequent prayer to God, what first Avith doing and
then with undoing, and after that with doing again, I
then did finish it."
In the process of " doing and undoing, and doing
again," we can imagine Bunyan trying his strength as
a spiritual designer. His own complacency in his
newly-found gift is obvious. He is like a man who.
BUNYAN^. 461
laboriously striving to learn a task, suddenly finds
himself in possession of a more cunning way of doing
it. He has started a spring of hidden accomplish-
ment, which works in him henceforth with a joyous
and fruitful activity. But the accomplishment is not
without its snares. Its very facility to one like Bun-
y an— all whose thoughts are images— is its danger ;
and it cannot he said that he has escaped this danger.
Certainly he has not done so in his first attempt. In
the Holy City there is too little concentration— too
much of the mere straggling play of fancy— catching
at every point, and stretchiug its capricious tendrils
around every clause, and even word. It is tedious in
its minute spiritualising, and frequently overdone and
mistaken in its applications ; but it shows, at the same
time, a wonderful consistency and life of treatment.
Almost any taste but that of Bunyan's, with its singular
instinct of truthfulness, even where it is following out
a wrong idea, would have gone lamentably astray in
the execution of such a task as he attempted.
Bunyan tried his new powers not merely in prose,
but in verse. His poems are supposed to have been
chiefly written during his imprisonment. They have
feeling and tenderness, and a quaint grace of expres-
sion; but more can scarcely be said in their behalf.
They have none of the imaginative vigour and life
of his allegories. His Profitable Meditations,^ his One
Thing is Needful, and Ehal and Gerizzim, or the Bless-
ing and the Curse, may interest the curious, and even
excite the admiration of certain minds ; but in them
we see Bunyan, not in his strength, but in his weak-
ness. His rhymes at times are deplorable, as any one
may judge from looking at the poetical prologues to
* A beautiful edition of these, edited by Mr Offer, has just appeared.
462 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
the two parts of the Pilgrim's Progress. Yet there is a
strange, careless felicity here and there — and especially
in his Divine Emblems. In these, more than elsewhere,
he really rises at times into poetry; and the simple
tenderness of his imaginative brooding breaks forth
into touching and expressive pictures. *
During the last three or four years of his imprison-
ment, its strictness was greatly relaxed. He was per-
mitted, as before, to visit his friends, and even to
preach. So little was his action fettered, that he was
really designed to the pastoral office among his old
Bedford congregation before lie had formally obtained
his freedom. He renewed his interest in religious
discussion by making a vigorous attack upon a book
then making some noise. The Design of Christianity,
by Dr Fowler, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, This
book marked the rising of the new spirit wdiich
was so soon to leaven the theology of the Church of
England. It was the design of Christianity, accord-
ing to it, not so much to free man from guilt, and to
grant a free and gracious pardon, as to restore his
nature to its original state of soundness and moral
harmony. It spoke of a righteousness as a " sound
* For example, in the following lines on the " Sun's Reflection upon
the Clouds on a Fair Morning" —
" Look yonder ! Ah ! methinks mine eyes do see
Clouds edged with silver as fine garments be ;
They look as if they saw the golden face
That makes black clouds most beautiful with grace.
Unto the Saint's sweet incense of then- prayer.
These smoky curled clouds I do compare ;
For, as these clouds seem edged or laced with gold,
Their prayers return with blessings mainfold,"
If this is scarcely poetry, it is, perhaps, something better ; and there
are others, such as the lines on a " Fruitful Apple-Tree," and those on
the " Child with a Bird at the Bush," that show the same rich simpli-
city of language, and the same sweet plaintive tone.
BUNYAN. 463
complexion of zeal, such, as maintains in life and
vigour whatsoever is essential to it, by the force ancV
power whereof a man is enabled to behave himself as
a creature indued with a principle of reason, keeps his
supreme faculty on its throne, brings into due subjec-
tion all his inferior ones, his carnal imagination, his
brutish passions and affections." The purity of human
nature — the essence of the Divine — was represented as
consisting in a " hearty approbation of, and an affec-
tionate compliance with, the eternal laws of righteous-
ness, and a behaviour agreeable to the essential and
immutable differences of good and evil."
Such principles were peculiarly obnoxious to Bunyan.
They came into conflict with all his own deepest ex-
periences, as well as with his views of Scripture.
Christianity, viewed as a mere moral system, was to
him no Gospel at all ; and he no sooner heard of the
book, than he was anxious to see it and reply to it.
It was brought to him in prison in February 1672,
and in the course of forty-two days he had written
his answer to it, under the title of A Defence of the
Doctrine of J^istifcation by Faith in Jesus Christ,
2Jroving that Gospel Holiness flows from thence. His
defence is a vigorous and lively argument — not very
systematic or coherent, but making up for the want
of system by the cleverness and energy of its detailed
attacks. He makes short work with the learning and
philosophy of the Design of Christianity ; and, taking
his stand on the simple letter of Scripture, on many
points very successfully encounters Fowler. His
whole heart was in the work, and he is not sparing
in his epithets. He begins as follows: — "Sir,— Having
heard of your book entitled The Design of Christianity,
and that in it was contained such principles as gave
464 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
just offence to Christian ears, I was desirous of a
view thereof, that, from my sight of things, I might
be the better able to judge. But I could not obtain,
till the 18th of this 10th month, which was too soon
for you, Sir, a pretended minister of the Word, so
vilely to expose to public view the rottenness of your
heart on principles diametrically opposite to the sim-
plicity of the Gospel of Christ. And, had it not been
for the consideration, that it is not too late to oppose
open blasphemy (such as endangereth the souls of
thousands), I had cast by this answer as a thing out
of season."
Such a mode of attack was too easily retorted ; and
Fowler replied in a style that far outdid Bunyan's
abuse. His answer Avas entitled, Dirt Wiped Off, and,
in the course of it, he designated Bunyan by such
epithets as " a wretched scribbler," " a most black-
mouthed calumniator," " so very dirty a creature,
that he disdains to dirt his fingers with him."
Bunyan was pardoned and liberated in September
^\]772, at the time of the Declaration of Indulgence,
after Charles had formed his secret plans for the re-
establishment of Popery. The story has been, that
Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, and Dr Owen, were con-
cerned in his liberation; but there seems no good
ground for this story. His old enemies, the Quakers,
appear to have had more to do with it. "When Charles
had issued his Indulgence, some of the Quakers sued
for a special act of pardon, which they are said to
have obtained, in consideration of the services wliich
one of their number had rendered to the King, in
assisting his escape after the battle of AVorcester.
Greatly to their honour, the Quakers used their tem-
porary access to the royal favour, not merely for the
BUN Y AN. 465
good of tlieir own sect ; tliey got included in the " in-
strument " of pardon the names of many Dissenters,
and, among others, that of John Bunyan.*
On his release Bunyan devoted himself with renewed
and enlarged activity to the duties of his ministry. A
private house, which had been licensed as a place of
meeting for his congregation, had become " so thronged
that many were constrained to stay without, though it
was very spacious, every one striving to partake of
his instructions." He lived, we are told by one who
was a "true friend and a long acquaintance," f in much
peace and quiet of mind, contenting himself with that
little God had bestowed upon him, and sequestering
himself from all secular employments to follow that of
his call to the ministry. Besides his labours in Bed-
ford, he visited the neighbouring villages and counties,
where he believed he could do good by his preaching
or pastoral attentions, — "where he knew or imagined
any people might stand in need of his assistance." The
regularity of his visitations, and the general respect
which began to be paid to him, procured him the ap-
pellation of Bishop Bunyan. This may have been said
half in "jeer," as his biographer supposes ; but even
in this sense it testifies to the consideration which he
had obtained among his sect, and the wide influence
which he exercised.
Notwithstanding his encounter with Dr Fowler, he
maintained his character as an uncontroversial and
peace-loving man. He spent much of his time in
works of peace and charity, " in reconciling differences,
by which he hindered many mischiefs, and saved some
families from ruin." In such "fallings out "he was
* Offor's Memoir of Bunyan, Works, i. 61. Ed. Glas.
•t* Continuation of Mr Bunyan's Life.
2 G
466 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
uneasy till he found tlie means of reconciliation, and
of establishing again the bonds of aftection.
The same peace-loving spirit that marked his private
life distinguished his ecclesiastical views. He was
himself a Baptist, in the strictest sense ; he maintained,
that is to say, that adult baj)tism was the scriptural
rite, and repudiated the baptism of infants ; but he
would not, with the great body of his co-religionists,
convert the practice of personal " water baptism," as .
they called it, into a test of communion. In a short
treatise which he published after his liberation, en-
titled A Confession of my Faith and a Reason of my
Practice, he set forth his principles of communion in
a very catholic spirit. He would hold Christian in-
tercourse with all who showed faith and holiness, and
who were willing to subject themselves to the laws
and government of Christ in His Church. His views
met with a storm of opposition from the more extreme
of his own sect. Three of their most able and learned
men — Dan vers, Kiflfin, and Paul— undertook the de-
fence of sectarianism, and sought to overwhelm him
at once by their learning and abuse. He complained
meekly of the "unhandsome brands that they had laid
upon him," as that he was a " Macliiavelliau," a man
"devilish, proud, insolent, presumptuous, and the like."
He refused to say in reply, " The Lord rebuke thee —
words fitter to be spoken to the devil than a brother ; "
but he appealed to the sense and judgment of his
readers, in a further treatise on- the sul)ject, adding
the following noble declaration : — " What Mr Kiffin
hath done in the matter I forgive, and love him never
the worse ; but must stand by my principles, because
they are peaceable, godly, profitable, and such as tend
to the edification of my brother, and as, I believe, Avill
BUNYAN. 467
be justified in the day of judgmeut. That I deny the
ordinance of baptism, or that I have placed one piece
of an argument against it, though they feign it, is quite
without colour of truth. All I say is, that the Church
of Christ hath not warrant to keep out of her com-
munion the Christian that is discovered to be a visible
saint by the Word — the Christian that walketh accord-
ing to his light with God."
But Bunyan was strong not only in temper, but in
argument. He had a good cause, and felt that he had ;
and he was not the man to yield in such a case to any
storm of opposition, however much it might pain him.
He vindicated at length his " j)eaceable principles and
true," — met abuse with courageous confession, and sec-
tarian feebleness with a quiet ridicule, which at times
he could employ with great effect. His opponents had
inquired insolently how long he had been a Baptist ;
and remarked that it is " an ill bird that bewrays his
own nest." He replied that he cared little for names
— his only concern was to be a Christian. " As for
these factious titles of Anabaptist, Independent, Pres-
byterian, and the like, I conclude that they come
neither from Jerusalem nor Antioch, but rather from
hell and Babylon, for they naturally tend to division.
You may know them by their fruits." * One of his
opponents had said, that, " as great men's servants are
known by their livery, so are Gospel believers by the
livery of water baptism ;" to which he satirically re-
plies— " Go you but ten doors from where men know
you, and see how many of the world or Christians will
know you by this goodly livery. What ! known by
water baptism to be one who hath put on Christ, as
a servant by the gay livery his master gave him?
* Vol. ii. p. 6i9.
468 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
Away, fond man : you do quite forget the text, ' By
this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye
love one another.' " *
After the publication of the Pilgrim's Progress in
1678, and some of his more popular tracts, such as
Come and Weleome to Jesus Christ, Bunyan acquired
not only respect but fame. Efforts were made to in-
duce him to leave his congregation at Bedford for a
more public sphere, but he steadily resisted them. As
his friend Charles Doe says, " he refused a more plen-
tiful income to keep his station." He made frequent
visits, however, to London, to preach, and there his
popularity attracted immense crowds to hear him. "I
have seen," says Doe, "to hear him preach, by my com-
putation, about 1200 at a morning lecture, by seven
o'clock on a working day, in the dark winter-time. I
also computed about 3000 came to hear him one Lord's
day at London, at a Town's End meeting-house ; so
that half m- ere fain to go back again for want of room,
and then himself was fain, at a back door, to be pulled
almost over people, to get upstairs to the pulpit."
His popularity, and the attachment of his female
converts, gave rise to a wretched scandal, upon which
one of his biographers -f* has dwelt with unnecessary
length. We have already quoted his opinion that he
had no power of " carrying it pleasantly with women,"
their company alone he could not away with. One of his
female disciples, however, Agnes Beaumont by name,
courted his company on a particular occasion in such
a manner as to try his firmness and overcome it. He
was on his way from Bedford to preach at a neighbour-
ing village. All his friends were stirred with anxiety
to hear him, and Agnes amongst others. She was to
* Vol. ii. p. 638. t Philip.
BUNYAN. 469
have been carried to the "meeting" on horseback, by a
"certain j\Ir Wilson of Hitchin," but he disappointed
her. As she stood at her father's door, plunged in grief,
Bunyan himself, "quite unexpected," came up on horse-
back ; and she, trembling with eagerness to go, yet
afraid herself to ask to be taken by him, got her bro-
ther to do so. He replied, "with some degree of
roughness," "No, I will not carry her." But at length
he was persuaded to do so. And she, overjoyed, got
up behind him on the saddle. The affair, as may be
imagined, gave rise to scandal. The tableau of Bunyan
and a young woman riding together to sermon is amus-
ing to the fancy ; and, with all allowance for the dif-
ferent manners of the time, we can imagine how it
would tickle the gossips of Bedford. Save as an illus-
tration of these manners, the story is scarcely deserv-
ing of preservation. It has been handed down in the
narrative of the woman herself, which is of some length,
and full of singularly naive touches here and there.*
Bunyan's re])utatiori and popularity were not for a
moment affected by this ridiculous scandal ; it may be
questioned, indeed, whether it ever was anything more
than a piece of idle talk. He continued his preach-
ing and pastoral labours with unllagging energy. His
sermons, when he went to London to preach, drew not
only the multitude, but learned and distinguished men
to hear him. There is a story told of Dr Owen being
greatly taken by his preaching, and on his being asked
by the King " how a learned man, such as he, could
* As when she saj^s — " I had not rode far before ray heart began to
be lifted up with pride at the thoughts of riding behind the servant of the
Lord, and was pleased if any looked after as we rode along. Indeed, I
thought myself very happy that day ; first, that it pleased God to make
way for my going ; and then, that I should have had the honour to ride
behind Mr Bunyan, who would sometimes be speaking to me of the things
of God."
470 ENGLISH PURITANIST\I AND ITS LEADERS.
sit and listen to an illiterate tinker," of his answering,
"Please your Majesty, conld I possess that tinker's
abilities for preaching, I would most gladly part with
all my learning." The story is at least good evidence
of Bunyan's popularity as a preacher. He must have
been well known and well admired before he was likely
to form the subject of conversation between the King
and Dr Owen.
It might be questioned whether Bunyan's sermons,
as we read them, bear out his fame as a preacher.
They are, like all other sermons of the time, very long,
and frequently very tedious in their extension and
subdivisions. They are marked strongly by the Puri-
tan characteristic of advancing from point to point
through a wide series of didactic and illustrative re-
marks, without unfoldmg any new elements of thought
— beating out the whole round of scriptural truth,
instead of seizing some definite point of doctrine or of
duty answering to the text, and summarily expound-
ing and enforcing it. It must be remembered, how-
ever, that many of his sermons, like Baxter's, are ob-
viously not so much what he preached, as expanded
treatises, composed after being delivered in a shorter
form. And amidst all their length and tediousness,
we can sufficiently trace in such compositions as the
" Jerusalem Sinner Saved," " Come and Welcome to
Jesus Christ," the " Pharisee and the Publican," and
"The Greatness of the Soul, and Unspeakableness
of the Loss thereof," the elements of the lively and
remarkable interest that his preaching excited.* The
homely pith, simple feeling, and delineative vividness,
* The sermon called " Bunyan's Last Sermon," from John i. 13, may
be presumed to be more like the length and general character of his
sermons as he preached them.
BUNTAN. 471
combined witli tlie spiritual solemnity and unction of
these addresses, must have been powerfully attractive
in delivery. To all who felt and appreciated the awful
realities of which Bunyan spoke, the learned and dis-
tinguished, as well as the ignorant and poor, it is easy
to imagine what impressiveness there would be in his
charming simplicity, plain but pictured earnestness,
and his deep and fervid spirit of devotion. The liveli-
ness of his fancy, the very commonplaceness of his
argument — never vulgar, only homely — the constant
life, sense, and expressive ease of his style, even when
the turn of his thought is crude or extravagant, are all
among the highest qualities of popular pulpit oratory.
An intellectual nature like Bunyan's, the direct growth
of the popular religion — apt, imaginative, and eloquent,
without any scholastic training — frequently finds its
highest expression in preaching. This was not Bun-
yan's case. His allegories express and embalm his
characteristic genius far more completely than his
sermons ; but in these also we can see the working of
many of his exquisite gifts.
In such labours Bunyan spent the remaining years
of his life, which are unmarked by any events of par-
ticular importance. He and the Baptist congregation
at Bedford had to encounter renewed persecution in
1682, when the Tory and Papal reaction set in against
the exclusive and tyrannical spirit with which the
Whigs had used their power. His old enemies, the
" Justices," were again busy during this period, and
the meeting-house for some while was shut up. Bun-
yan himself, however, does not appear to have been
molested. He had sufficiently shown his peaceable
and unfactious character, and they could find no ex-
cuse for disturbing him.
472 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
In the midst of this persecution he published his
Holy War. The popularity of the Pilgrim's Progress,
and the success which it had met, not only beyond his
own sect, but beyond the bounds of Puritanism, led
him to the conception and composition of this more
elaborate allegory. As in many other cases, however,
this new effort never attracted the notice nor excited
the interest of the first. As a mere literary composi-
tion, there are some points of view in which the
Holy War might claim even a favourable comparison
with the earlier work. The allegorical idea on which
it is based is worked out with a more consistent and
curious art ; there is less rapid and shifting change
of scene, and less confusion of purpose, than in the Pil-
grims Progress ; yet, as a whole, it is greatly wanting
in the poetic charm and the nameless interest and
fascination of the latter allegory. It neither seizes
upon the imagination nor touches the heart as the
story of Christian does. Singularly ingenious, elabor-
ate, and coherent in its illustrations and characters, it
is almost as great a marvel, but it is not nearly so
felicitous nor exquisite a product of genius. The
second part of the Pilgrims Progress appeared two years
later (1684). A second part has seldom been handled
with a happier success. The old associations — the fa-
miliar scenes — the series of imagery — are all preserved ;
the same simple charm lies on every page ; while in
such characters as Mercy there is a deeper tenderness
— and in others, such as Greatheart and old Honest,
there is a broader and more vivid dramatic outKne
than in any of the figures in the first part. The por-
traits throughout show, if possible, a freer and easier
mastery of hand, although it must yield to the first
in the freshness and life of its scenes and incidents.
BUNYAN. 473
These were not — and, in tlie nature of tlie case, could
not be — rivalled.
On the accession of James, in the following year,
Bunyan seems to have apprehended the likelihood of
renewed trouble. This is inferred from the fact of his
having conveyed at this time any little property or
goods he had acquired to his wife. He was destined,
however, to finish his days in peace. He continued his
pastoral labour till the eve of the Eevolution. His
last work was that of a peacemaker. It was the char-
acter he had always loved, and with no work more
appropriate could he have closed his career. A friend
of his who lived at Eeading had threatened to disinherit
his son ; he was approaching his end ; and the idea of
his leaving the world unreconciled to his son weighed
upon Bunyan's heart. He undertook a journey to
Eeading on horseback — was successful in renewing
the bonds of amity between father and son — and had
reached London on his way back. Here, however, he
took ill — worn out with the journey — and rapidly sank.
He died in the house of his friend Mr Stradwick, a
grocer, and was buried in the Campo Santo, as Southey
calls it, of the Dissenters — Bunhill-fields Burying-
ground. The day of his death is stated in his epitaph,
and in the Life appended to his Grace Abounding, to
have been the 12th of August 1688; but other autho-
rities gave a later day of the same month.
Bunyan died as he had lived — a faithful, simple
man, intent upon his duty. His character is so simple
in its elements, and has been so fully exhibited in the
numerous touches of self-portraiture which we have
quoted from his autobiography, that little remains to
be added on the subject. Naturally a man of deep
474 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
and powerful earnestness and firm will — veliement in
Ills impulses, but moderate in his desires — he would
in any circumstances have proved a remarkable man.
He was, as he believed, before his conversion a notable
sinner ; he became, after conversion, a notable Chris-
tian, like his own Greatheart. Had he never been
more than a tinker at Elstow, he must have exercised
over his neighbours a social influence proportioned to
his strength of will and the determination of his con-
victions. He was not a man to let his life pass idly
by with the current. It is impossible to look at his
X3ortrait, and not recognise the lines of power by whicli it
is everywhere marked. It has more of a sturdy soldier
aspect than anything else — the aspect of a man who
would face dangers any clay rather than shun them ;
and this corresponds exactly to his description by his
oldest biographer and friend, Charles Doe. " He ap-
peared in countenance," he says, " to be of a stern and
rough temper. He had a sharp, quick eye, accom-
plished, with an excellent discernmg of persons. As
for his person, he was tall of stature, strong boned,
though not corpulent ; somewhat of a ruddy face, with
sparkling eyes, wearing his hair on the upper lip
after the old British fashion ; his hair reddish, but in
his later days time had sprinlvled it with grey ; his
nose well set, but not declining or bending, and his
mouth moderate large ; his forehead something high,
and his habit always plain and modest." — A more manly
and robust appearance cainiot well be conceived, his
eyes only showing in their sparkling depth the foun-
tains of sensibility concealed within the roughened
exterior. Here, as before, we are reminded of his
likeness to Luther. We see in both the same combi-
nation of broad, burly humanity with intense spir-
BUNYAN. 475
itual passionateness — of simplicity and affectionate-
ness with an obstinate, nnflincliing, some would say,
a headstrong courage. The Puritan, upon the whole,
is narrower than the Eeformer in the range of his
religious sympathies, and in the aspiration of his
genius — in general culture and magnanimity of
mind. There is a freer and larger play of human
feeling, and altogether a grander nature in the German.
There are, however, many special points of intellec-
tual as well as spiritual resemblance between them.
They have together the same intuition of the popular
religious instincts— the same mastery of the popular
dialect — the same love of allegory and story, and the
same picturesque liveliness of deUneation — and not
least, the same intense appreciation of the Puritan
doctrine of justification, as the sum and substance of
Christianity— the same susceptibility to states of spir-
itual darkness and struggle, joined to an unyielding
force of conviction, when once the truth is understood
and seized. We have already seen how much Bunyan
was indebted to Luther. Of all the books that he
found useful in his spiritual perplexities, none, except
the Bible, was so congenial and satisfactory to him as
the Comrmntary on the GalcUians. He found his own
spiritual condition so largely and profoundly reflected
in that book, that " it seemed to have been written out
of his own heart."
While rough and soldier-like in exterior, his old
biographer adds that Bunyan was "in his conversation
mild and affable, not given to loquacity or much dis-
course in company, unless some urgent occasion re-
quired it ; observing never to boast of himself or his
parts, but rather seem low in his own eyes, and submit
himself to the judgment of others ; abhorring lying
476 ENGLISH rUEITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
and swearing ; being just in all that lay in his power
to his word ; not seeming to revenge injuries, loving
to reconcile differences, and make friendship with all."
He was, in short, an honest, gentle, and peaceable
man — strong to endure and struggle for the sake of
principle, and in the doing of what he considered duty
— but as little of a fanatic and "pestilent fellow" as
any man could be. As a good soldier of Jesus Christ,
he was ready to endure hardness ; he would submit to
contumely and imprisonment rather than compromise
his conscience regarding the Book of Common Prayer ;
but he was no disturber, he willingly granted to
others the same rights that he claimed for himself.
The longer he lived he cared less for peculiarities, and
set his heart more on the substance of all religion.
He loved to make peace. This genuine spirit of reli-
gion shewed itself in him, mastering all the earth-
born passions and sectarianism so apt to cling to it.
It was the glory of Puritanism to have produced
many such men — men of a zeal and courage that
soared beyond all worldly considerations, and dared
everything for the truth, as they believed it, and yet
men whose highest instinct it w^as, if they had been
let alone, to be quiet and faithful in the work to
Avhich God had called them — men who lived in the
fullest radiance of the di\dne, and yet would have
been content to do good works unnoticed among men.
It was the disgrace of the Eestoration that it mistook
and ill-used such men, that it knew not the " sons of
God" save as "rogues" and "knaves," "conceited,
stubborn, fanatical dogs," * to be insulted, imprisoned,
and " stretched by the neck." Puritanism had no
doubt used its own dominance with a high hand ; it
* Jeffreys' language. Baxter's trial.
BUNYAN. 477
had been proud and scornful, and sufficiently tyranni-
cal in its day of triumpli ; but it never either hated
so blindly, nor punished so indiscriminately and wan-
tonly as Eoyalism. Narrow as was its spiritual vision
in many ways, and hard its dogmatism, it had a broader
eye and a larger heart than the miserable and de-
graded fanaticism of licence and cruelty which dis-
placed it, — and which found its natural and appropri-
ate employment in the persecution and maltreatment
of men like Baxter and Bunyan.
The special interest of Bunyan's writings, in our
point of view, consists in the number and variety of
the pictures of popular Puritanism that they contain.
His allegories teem with such pictures. He is the
great artist of the spiritual life of Puritanism. He had
himself lived through almost every phase of its pious
excitement ; his deep, sensitive nature responded to
all its chords of emotion ; and his vividly creative
imagination enabled him to seize and reproduce its
varied experiences in concrete representations, which
have perpetuated them far more lastingly than any
analysis or description could have done. And not
only what he himself had felt and known, but what he
had seen — all the diverse aspects of the religious and
the irreligious life around him — stamped themselves
as pictures on his mind, and reappear in his writings.
The field from which he drew his artistic materials
was strictly limited. It was only its relation to reli-
gion— to his own form of it, in fact — that made any
aspect of life interesting to him ; but within his range,
there is no artist has produced so many clearly-marked
individualities of portraiture.
So perfect in many respects is Bunyan's art, — so fer-
478 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
tile and easy liis creative faculty, — tliat we are apt to
overlook the extent to which he borrowed directly
from the real life around him. The more, however, we
study the Pilgr-wi's Fr ogress and the Bohj War, in
connection with his own history and times, the more
will we see reason to believe that their numerous cha-
racters directly and broadly reflect both the outer and
inner characteristics of the religious world familiar to
him.
In all his allegories, but especially in the Pilgrims
Progress, there is what may be called a purely ideal
or imaginative element, and a strictly realistic or lite-
ral element. The former is their poetic groundwork,
and is, in the main, drawn from Sciij)ture. Bunyan
knew no literature except that of the Bible ; his
imagination fed itself upon its grand forms of ex-
pression, — its wondrous scenes. It was at once
truth and poetry — all truth, and all poetry — to him.
And, accordingly, his allegories are found constructed
upon such great outlines of imaginative incident and
scenery as he had there learned to admire. All cri-
tics have been struck with the simplicity and faith-
fulness with which he reproduces scriptural circum-
stance and idea. But, combined with his vivid biblical
imagination, there is also everywhere, in his allegories,
the evidence of a rare power of actual observation, —
of sharp insight into the living characteristics around
him, — and great fuhiess of artistic skill in drawing
these from the life as he knew and saw them. It is
the religion of the Bible which he portrays ; minds
trained in the most opposite schools of Christian
thought have recognised the accuracy of his repre-
sentations ; but it is also religion, such as he saw it
in Bedford and its neighbourhood among his ielloAV-
BUNYAN. 479
Baptists, — among tlie adherents of the restored Church
— in its Puritan peculiarities, — in its Anglican com-
promises— with the stamp of persecution and exag-
geration on the one hand, — and the taint of self-^
indulgence and worldliness on the other hand. The
poetical scriptural element seems to give more the
general outline, the varied scenery of the Pilgrwis
Progress ; the realistic Puritan element, more the
graphic homely toviches that make the characters
start to life before us.
The flight of Christian from the city of Destruction,
the changing difficulties, helps, snares, dangers, de-
lights, and encouragements, through which he passes
on his journey to Mount Zion ; the Slough of De-
spond, the Village of Morality, the Narrow Gate ;
the Interpreter's house, with all its encouraging and
warning sights ; the place of the Cross, where Chris-
tian's burden " loosed from off his shoulders and fell
from off his back ; " the Hill of Difficulty ; the House
Beautiful, with the lions guarding it ; the Valley of
Humiliation, and the fight with ApoUyon, " a monster
hideous to behold, clothed with scales like a fish, and
with wings like a dragon, and feet like a bear, and
out of whose belly came fire and smoke ; " the terrors
of the Valley of the Shadow of Death ; Vanity Fair,
its persecutions, and the trial and death of Faithful ;
the Ptiver of Life, and the meadow " curiously beauti-
fied with lilies, and green all the year long;" Doubting-
Castle, and the Giant Despair ; the Delectable Moun-
tains, with their gardens and orchards, their vineyards
and fountains of water, and the shepherds feeding
their flocks ; the hill Clear, with the view of the gate
of the Celestial City ; the Enchanted Ground, whose
air naturally tended to drowsiness ; and the country
480 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
of Beulali, whose air was very sweet and pleasant,
where " they heard continually the singing of birds,
and saw every day the flowers appear on the earth,
and heard the voice of the turtle in the land;" and,
finally, the Eiver of Death, running very deep be-
tween the Pilgrims and the gate of the Celestial City. —
The great and permanent charm of these successive
pictures is the faithfulness with which they reproduce
biblical ideas and imagery. One sees the reflection
of Scripture everywhere. Bright, felicitous, and pic-
turesque as Bmiyan's imagination is, he nowhere tra-
vels beyond its range. Nature is beheld by him only
in the light of the sacred page, and delineated by him
only in its descriptive language. The Pauline ideas
of sin and of salvation are closely preserved by him
in their great outlines. So far, his representations are
true, not merely to one phase of Christianity, but to
the universal Christian instinct and feeling. All con-
fess, in some measure, to this catholicity in the con-
ception of the Pilgrims Progress — this broad fidelity
and ideal felicity in its treatment.
But, fully admitting this ideal scriptural element —
answering to the almost universal Christian apprecia-
tion of the story — it is equally true that, when we
descend from its general imaginative texture to a par-
ticular examination of many of its features and cha-
racters, we meet with the most literal and direct ex-
pressions of liis own Puritan observation and expe-
rience. In the first instance, his imagination draws
its materials from Scripture — in the second, from life ;
and it is, above all, this realistic element that gives
to Bunyan's great allegory its special interest. It is
because he draws so much from outward fact that we
find his pages so living — and linger over them — and
BUNYAN. 481
return to them — and find them not only instructive, but
entertaining. Spenser, in his great allegory, is richer
in poetic feeling, and in the expression of natural
beauty — he has represented higher forms of ethical
conception, and taken a wider view of humanity —
but he has nowhere caught life, and mirrored it, as
Bunyan has done. He is a dreamer throughout ; his
imagination roams wholly in an ideal region ; there
is no familiarity, no tangibility, in his portraits ; and
hence, even those who most admire the poetry of the
Faery Queen, feel little interest in its successive
stories. It is read for the grandeur, beauty, and luxu-
riance of its poetical ideas and descriptions ; but who
ever read it from any sustained interest in its legends,
or the characters — exquisite creations as some of them
are — that figure in them ? But we read Bunyan for
the interest of his story, and especially for the pi-
quancy, variety, and homely expressiveness of the
characters that cross Ms pages. In comparison with
all other allegories that ever were written, the Pil-
grim's Progress is interesting ; and among the main
sources of tliis interest are the diverse portraits
of the social and religious life of Puritanism that it
presents.
Christian himself, in the deep dejection and misery
with which he begins his journey, in his self-conscious
absorption concerning his own safety, and his abso-
lute separation from all his old labours and interests,
in the dangers that beset his every pause and his
every gratification by the way, is a picture of the Puri-
tan Christian. The groundwork — the main features of
the character — are broadly biblical and catholic ; but
there is also, in such points as now mentioned, the
clear practical stamp of Puritanism. The conception
2 H
482 ENGLISH PUKITANISM AND ITS LEADERS,
of the world as a city about to be burned up, with no
good and no hope in it — of the Christian life as a swift
and unresting passage from Destruction to Safety in
heaven — is drawn from Scripture, yet drawn with the
tone of exaggeration of the religious ideas in which
Bunyan was nurtured.
Such peculiarities and touches of the practical reli-
gious life familiar to him appear strongly in some of
the accessory characters. No character of the time
was more conspicuous than that of the warrior Chris-
tian— the religious soldier of the Commonwealth ; and,
accordingly, this idea is one of the author's most fre-
quent inspirations. His best Christians are all fightmg
Christians — men who not only hold their own, but slay
giants by the way, and manfully encounter and over-
come monsters .that impede their progress. Greatheart
is one of his happiest portraits, and he is the portrait
of a warrior Christian, with " sword and shield and
helmet," and who is " good at his weapons ; " who kills
Giant Grim, and Giant Maul, and Giant Slay-good,
and, most of all, takes off the head of Giant Despair,
and demolishes Doubting Castle. He is at once guide,
preacher, and soldier. Old Honest is even a more ex-
pressive specimen. His first exclamation, when Great-
heart and the others accost him, and ask him what he
would have done if they had come to rob him, as he
for a moment supposed, reveals in full liis character.
" Done :" he says ; " why, I would have fought as long-
as breath had been in me : and had I so done, I am
sure you would never have given me the worst of it,
for a Christian can never be overcome unless he shall
yield of himself" There is an affecting simplicity in
old Honest ; he has no thoughts but to do his duty
and fight. Then there is Valiant-for-the-Trutli, who
BUNYAN. 483
foiiglit " till his sword did cleave to his hand." Doubt-
less Bunyan knew such fighting saints, and the touches
with which he sets them before us may have been
transferred from living specimens of the race. Cer-
tainly in such portraits we have before us true and
life-like illustrations of the soldier Cluistian of the
Commonwealth.
It is remarkable that in the Holy War, where the
characters are so entirely military, we have no such
natural and happy portraits as those of Greatheart
and old Honest. Captain Eesistance, and Captain Con-
viction, and Captain Boanerges, &c., are comparative
shadows — mere dim ideals, not half filled up. While
the general intellectual conception of this allegory is,
as we have said, well worked out, with even greater
consistency than that of the Pilgrim'' s Progress, there
is yet throughout it a want of the life and reality of
characterisation that distinguish the earlier allegory.
There was nothing more characteristic of Puritanism
than the conflict and distress of emotion which it asso-
ciated with religion. All religious life and excellence
sprang out of the darkness of some great crisis of
spiritual feeling. " I live you know where," Crom-
well wrote to his cousin, " in Kedar — which signifies
darkness." It is remarkable how prominently Bunyan
has seized and expressed this idea. Considering his
own experience, it would indeed have been strange if
he had not. The Slough of Despond awaits every in-
quiring pilgrim — the pure-minded Mercy no less than
the sinful Christiana. And even after many pilgrims
have got far on in their journey — after Vanity Fair has
been passed, and theEiver of Life and the Pleasant Mea-
dbw — there is Doubting Castle and Giant Despair. Mr
Feeble-mind, Mr Despondency and his daughter Much-
484 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
afraid, Mr Little-faith, and Mr Feariag, who " lay roar-
ing at the Slough of Despond for above a month," are
all true but anxious and distressed pilgrims. It is im-
possible not to see the impress of a prominent feature
of popular Puritanism in such characters. The burden
of their spiritual weakness oppresses and prostrates
them. It is only when Greatheart delivers them from
Giant Despair that they have any relief " Now when
Feeble-mind and Eeady-to-Halt saw that it was the
head of Giant Despair indeed, they were very jocund
and merry. Now Christiana, if need was, could play
upon the viol, and her daughter Mercy upon the lute ;
so, since they were so merry disposed, she played them
a lesson, and Eeady-to-Halt would dance. So he took
Despondency's daughter Much-afraid by the hand, and
to dancing they went in the road. True, he could not
dance without one crutch in his hand, but I promise you
he footed it well ; also the girl was to be commended,
for she answered the music handsomely. As for Mr
Despondency, the music was not so much to him : he
was for feeding rather than dancing, for that he was
almost starved." There is queer grim humour in this
picture of Puritan mirth. It is but a rare gleam, and
a very grotesque one. Mr Despondency had evidently
the truer appreciation of his position. The most de-
voted saint could not live without eating ; but no com-
bination of lute and viol and handsome footing can
make the dancing congruous.
While Bunyan has preserved such various types of
the Puritan Christian, he has not forgotten their op-
posites in the Eoyal Anghcanism, or false religion of
the day, as it appeared to him. By-ends is one of
his most graphic pictures. He and his friends and
companions, Lord Time-server, Lord Fair-speech, Mr
BUNYAN. 485
Siriootliman, Mr Facing-both-ways, Mr Anything, and
the parson of the parish, Mr Two-tongues, all make
a group of which Bunyan knew too many speci-
mens. In Puritan times they had been zealous for
religion ; while it sat in high places, they had admired
and respected it, and seemed to be among its most
forward followers ; but they had arrived at such " a
pitch of breeding," " that they knew how to carry it
to all." From the stricter sort they difiered in two
small points. "1st, They never strove against wind
and tide ;" and, 2d, " They were always most zealous
when religion goes in his silver slippers." " They loved
much to talk with him in the street when the sun
shines and the people applaud him." "They had a luck
to jump in their judgment with the present times."
Talkative is a specimen of another phase of pseudo-
religious life. It was his great business and delight
" to talk of the history or the mystery of things," of
" miracles, wonders, and signs sweetly penned in Holy
Scripture." He is a capital, if somewhat overdone,
picture of the empty religious professor, who learns
by rote the " great promises and consolations of the
Gospel," who can give a " hundred Scripture texts for
confirmation of the truth — that all is of grace and
not of works ;" who can talk by the hour, of " things
heavenly or things earthly, things moral or things evan-
gelical, things sacred or things profane, things past or
things to come, things essential or things circumstan-
tial," but who, notwithstanding all his " fair tongue, is
but a sorry feUow." He is the son of one Say-well,
and dwells in Prating Eow. He can discourse as well
on the " ale-bench" as on the way to Zion. " The more
drink he hath in his crown," the more of such things
he hath in his head. He is " the very stain, and re-
486 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
proach, and shame of religion." — " A saint abroad, a
devil at home." " It is better to deal with a Turk than
with him." How many Talkatives must have made
their appearance in the wake of the great Puritan
movement — the spawn of its earnest and grave pro-
fessions ! Bedford and its neighbourhood had, no
doubt, many of them ; and Bunyan knew and despised
them in life, as he has fixed them in immemorial dis-
grace in his pages.
The most complete scene from life probably in the
Pilgrim's Progress is the trial of Faithfid. at Vanity
Fair. The mob that shouted against Faithful and
Christian, and " beat them, and besmeared them with
dirt," and called them " Bedlams and mad," is the pic-
ture of a Eestoration mob hooting the persecuted saints.
Lord Hategood, the judge, is the impersonation of the
odious arrogance and ready cruelty of the justices, as
they appeared to Bimyan ; the jury and the witnesses
are all more or less portraits ; not a feature is filled in
which does not represent some fact or circumstance
well known to him. The indictment is almost his own,
under which his long imprisonment was sealed. " They
were enemies to, and disturbers of their trade ; they
had made commotions and divisions in the town, and
had won a party to their own most dangerous opinions,
in contempt of the law of their Prince." Jeffreys him-
self might be supposed speaking in the words of the
judge. " Thou runagate, heretic, and traitor, hast
thou heard what these honest gentlemen have witnesed
against thee ? " Faithful : " May I speak a few words
in my own defence ? " Judge : " Sirrah, sirrah, thou
deservest to live no longer, but to be slain immediately
upon the place : yet, that all men may see our good-
ness toward thee, let us hear what thou hast to say."
BUNYAN. , 487
The idea and forms of a trial had strongly impressed
themselves on Bunyan's mind. It had been one of
the most familiar and imposing scenes of his own life,
and so had become fixed upon his memory, and a part
of his imaginative furniture. It is depicted at great
length in tlie Holy War, as well as in the Pilgrim's
Progress. This shows the homely limits, but at the
same time the strength and vivacity, of his fancy. He
drew from his own narrow experience — but his art
made the dim pictures of his memory all alive with
the fitting touches of reality.
This realistic character of Bunyan's allegories is of
special interest to us now. We are carried back
to Bedford and the Midland Counties in the seven-
teenth century, and we mingle with the men and wo-
men that lived and did their work there. It is in
many respects a beautiful and affecting picture that
we contemplate. A religion which could produce men
like Greatheart, and old Honest, and Christian him-
self, and Faithful, and Hopeful — and of which the
gentle and tender-hearted Mercy was a fair expression,
— had certainly features both of magnanimity and of
beauty. There is a simple earnestness and a pure-
minded loveliness in Bunyan's highest creations that
are very touching. Puritanism lives in his pages —
spiritually and socially — in forms and in colouring
which must ever command the sympathy and enlist
the love of all good Christians.
But his pages no less show its narrowness and defi-
ciencies. Life — even spiritual life — is broader than
Bunyan saw it and painted it. It is not so easily and
sharply defined — it cannot be so superficially sorted
and classified. It is more deep, complex, and subtle —
more involved, more mixed. There may have been
488 ENGLISH PURITANISM AND ITS LEADERS.
good in Talkative, with all his emptiness and love for
the ale-bench — and Mrs Timorous, and even By-ends,
might have something said for them. Nowhere, in
reality, is the good so good, or the bad so bad, as Puri-
tan evangelical piety is apt to conceive and represent
them. There is work to be done in the city of De-
struction as well as in fleeing from it. The Meadow
with the sparkling river, and the Enchanted Ground,
are not mere snares to lure and hurt us. There is
room for leisure and literature, and poetry and art
even, as we travel to Mount Zion. There is a meeting-
point for all these elements of human culture, and the
" one tiling needful " — without wdiich all culture is
dead — though Bunyan and Puritanism failed to see it.
Let us reverence with all our heart the spiritual
earnestness of such men as Bunyan, and of the system
they represented ; few things higher or more beautiful
have ever been seen in this world. But we are also
bound, if we would not empty our earthly existence of
the beautiful and grand — the graceful, fascinating, and
refined in many forms of civilisation and art — to claim
admiration for much that they despised, and a broader,
more tolerant, and more genial interpretation of nature
and life than they would have allowed.
THE END.
ERRATA.
Page 29, line 20, for on read in.
,, 39, ,, 8, for ten read twelve.
,, 93, ,, 21, oraii great before key.
,, — ,, 25, for unexpIainaUe read inextricahle.
„ 175, „ 13, for 1624 read 1625.
„ 180, „ 14, for endueth read indueth.
,, 183, ,, 23, for morn read moon,
>> — ,, 8, for faith read youth.
„ 242, ,, 17, omit z7 before its.
,, 274, ,, 4, for views read veui.
» 278, „ 5, for coztW read would.
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By the Rev. John Tulloch, D.D.,
Principal and Primarius Piofessor of Theology, St Mary's College, St
Andrews.
Second Edition, Crown Octavo, price 6s. 6d.
" We are not acquainted with any work in which so much solid information upon the leading
aspects of the great Reformation is presented in so well-packed and pleasing a form." — Witness.
" The idea was excellent, and most ably has it been executed. Each Essay is a lesson in
sound thinking as well as in good writing. Tlie deliberate perusal of the volume will be an
exercise for which all, whether young or old, will be the better. The book is erudite, and
tliroughout marked by great, independence of thought. We very highly prize the publica-
tion."— British Standard.
12 MESSES BLACKWOOD AND SONS' PUBLICATIONS.
History of Europe,
FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION TO THE
BATTLE OF WATERLOO.
By Sir Archibald Alison, Bart., D. C.L.
A New Library Edition (being the Tenth) including a copious Index, embellished
with authentic Portraits. 14 vols. Octavo, price £10, 10s.
Crown Octavo Edition, 20 vols., pi-ice £0.
People's Edition, 12 vols., double cols., £2, Ss. ; and Index Vol., 3s.
Continuation of Alison's History of Europe,
FROM THE FALL OF NAPOLEON TO THE ACCESSION OF LOUIS
NAPOLEON.
By Sir Archibald Alison, Bart., D.C.L.
Complete in Nine Vols., price £G, 7s. Gd. Uniform with the Library Edition of
the Author's " History of EurojDe, from the Commencement of the French
Revolution."
Atlas to Alison's History of Europe.
Containing 109 Maps and Plans of Countries, Battles, Sieges, and Sea-fights.
Constructed by A. Keith Johnston, F.Il.S.E. With Vocabulary of Mili-
tary and Marine Terms.
Library Edition, £3, 3s. ; People's Edition, £1, lis. Cd.
Life of John, Duke of Marlborough.
WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF HIS C(JXTEMPORARIES.
By Sir Archibald Alison, Bart., D.C.L.
Third Edition, Two Vols. Octavo, Portrait and Maps, 30s.
History of Greece under Foreign Domination.
By George Finlay, LL.D. , Athens.
Five Volumes Octavo — viz. :
Greece tiiider the Romans, b.c. 146 to a.d. 717. A Historical View of the
condition of the Greek Nation, from its Conquest by the Romans until the
Extinction of the Roman Power in the East. Second Edition, l(is.
History of the Byzantine Empire, a.d. 716 to 1204 ; and of the Greek Empire
of Nicfca and Constantinople, A.D. 1204 to 1453. Two Volumes, £1, 7s. 6d.
Medieval Greece and Trebizond. The History of Greece, from its Conquest by
the Crusaders to its Conquest by the Turks, A.D. 1204 to 1566 ; and History
of the Empire of Trebizond, A.D. 1104 to 1461. Price 12s.
Greece under Othoman and Venetian Domination, a.d. 1453 to 1821. Price
10s. 6d.
" His book is worthy to t:\ke its plnce among tlie remarkable ■works on Greeli history,
wliieh form one of the cliief glories of English scholarship. Tlie history of Greece is but half
told without it."^London Guardian.
" His work is therefore learned and profound. It throws a flood of light upon an import-
ant though obscure portion of Grecian histor\-. . . . In the essential requisites of fidelity,
accuracy, and learning, Mr Fiulay bears a favourable comparison witli any historical writer
of our day." — North American Review.
MESSRS BLACKWOOD AND SONS' PUBLICATIONS. 13
Sir William Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics and
Logic.
Edited by the Eev. H. L. Mansell, B.D., LL.D.,
Wynfiete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, Oxford ;
And John Veitch, M.A.,
Professor of Logic, Rhetoric, and Metaphysics, St Andrews.
In Four Vols. Octavo, price £2, 8s. Each Course is sold separately— viz. :
LECTURES ON METAPHYSICS. Two Vols., price £1, 4s.
LECTURES ON LOGIC. Two Vols., price £1, 4s.
Thorndale ; or, the Conflict of Opinions.
By V/iLLiAM Smith,
Author of "A Discourse on Ethics," &c.
A New Edition. Crown Octavo, price 10s. 6"d.
Institutes of Metaphysics,
THE THEORY OF KNOWING AND BEING.
By James F. Ferrier, A.B., Oxon.,
Professor of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy, St Andrews.
Second Edition, Crown Octavo, 10s. 6d.
Works of Professor Wilson.
Edited by his Son-in-Law, Professor Ferrier.
In Twelve Vols. Crown Octavo, price £3, 12s.
The following are sold separately : —
NOCTES AMBROSIAN^. Four Vols., 24s.
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TALES. One Vol., 6s.
POEMS. Oue Vol., 6s.
14 MESSES BLACKWOOD AND SONs' PUBLICATIONS.
NEW GENERAL ATLAS.
To be comi^leted in Ten Parts {EigJd Published), price 10«. Gd. each.
The Royal Atlas of Modern Geography :
In a Series of entirely original and authentic Maps, with a special Index to each
Map, arranged so as to obviate the former inconvenient method of refer-
ence by Degrees and Minutes of Longitude and Latitude.
By Alex. Keith Johnston, F.R.S.E., F.R.G.S., &c.,
Geographer in Ordinary to Her Majesty, Author of the "Physical
Atlas," &c.
The Concluding Parts will be published early in 1861, forming a handsome Volume
in Royal Folio.
The Physical Atlas of Natural Phenomena.
By Alex. Keith Johnston, F.R.S.E., &c.,
Geographer to the Queen for Scotland.
A New and Enlarged Edition, consisting of 35 Folio Plates, 27 smaller ones,
printed in Colours, with 135 pages of Letterpress, and Index.
Imperial Folio, half-bound morocco, £12, 12s.
The Chemistry of Common Life.
By Professor Johnston.
A New Edition, Edited by G. H. Lewes.
Illusti-ated with numerous Engravings. In Two Vols. Foolscap, price lis. 6d.
The Physiology of Common Life.
By George IJ. Lewes.
Illustrated with numerous Engravings. Two Vols., 12s.
Contents: Hanger .and Thirst.— Pood and Drink.— Digestion and Indigestion.— Tlie Struc-
ture and Uses of the Blood. — The Circulation.— Respiration and Suffocation.- "Why we
are Warm, and liow we keep so.— Feeling and Thinking.— Tlie Mind ard the Brain. —
Our Senses and Sensations.- Sleep and Dreams.— The Qualities we inherit from our
Parents. — Life and Death.
MESSRS BLACKWOOD AND SONS' PUBLICATIONS. 15
Introductory Text-Book of Geology.
By David Page, F.G.S.
Fourth Edition, with Engi-avings. In Crown Octavo, price Is. (id.
" It lias not been often our good-foitnne to examine a tcxt-bnok on science of which we
could express an opinion so entirely favourable as we are enabled to do of Mr Page's little
work." — Atheiueum.
Advanced Text-Book of Geology,
DESCRIPTIVE AND INDUSTRIAL.
By David Page, F.G.S.
Second Edition, Enlarged, with numerous Engi-avings, 6s.
" An admirable book on Geology. It is from no invidious desire to underrate other
works— it is the simple expression of justice— which causes us to assign to Mr Page's
Advanced Text-Booh tlie very first pl:ice among geological works addressed to students, at
least among those which have come before us. We have read every word of it, with care and
witli delight, never hesitating as to its meaning, never detecting the omission of anything
needful in a popular and sticcinct exposition of a rich and varied subject."— irarfer.
" It is therefore with unfeigned pleasure that we record our appreciation of his Advanced
Text-Book of Geology. We have carefully read this truly satisfactory book, and do not hesi-
tate to say that it'is an excellent compendium of the great tacts of Geology, and written iu
a truthful and philosophic ?,yi'mt."—Edinhurgh Philoaophical Jovmal.
" We know of no introduction containing a larger amount of information in the same
space, and which we could more cordially recommend to the geological student." — Athemeum.
Handbook of Geological Terms and Geology.
By David Page, F.G.S.
In Crown Octavo, price 6s.
"'To the student, miner, engineer, architect, agriculturist, and others, who may have
occasion to deal with geological tacts, and yet who might not be inclined to turn up half a
dozen volumes, or go through a course of geological readings for an e.xplauation of the term
iu question,' Mr Page has carried out the object with the most complete success. His book
amply fulfils the promise contained in its title, constituting a handbook not only of geologi-
cal terms, but of the science of geology. It will not only be absolutely indispensable to the
student, but will bo invaluable as a complete and handy book of reference even to the
advanced geologist." — Litcranj Gazette.
" There is no more earnest living practical worker in geology than Mr David Page. To
his excellent Introductory Trxt-Book of Geolo<iy and h\s Advanced Text- Book of Qeology,
Descriptive and Industrial, he has now added an admirable system of geological terras, with
ample and clearly written explanatory notices, such as all geological observers, whether they
are able professors and distinguished lecturers, or mere inquirers upon the threshold of the
science, must find to be of the highest value."— /'ruf^icai Mechanics' Journal.
" But Mr Page's work is very much more than simply a translation of the language of
Geology into plain English ; it is a Dictionary, in which not only the meaning of the words
is given, but also a clear and concise account of all that is most remarkable and worth know-
ing iu the objects which the words are designed to express. In doing this he has chiefly
kept in view the requirements of the general reader, but at the same time adding such
details as will render the volume an acceptable Handbook to the student and professed
geologist." — Tlie Press.
16 MESSRS BLACKWOOD AND SONS PUBLICATIONS.
The Book of the Farm.
By Henry Stephens, F.R.S.E.
A New Edition. In Two Volumes, large Octavo, with upwards of 600 Engrav-
ings, price £3, half-bound.
Book of Farm Implements and Machines.
By James Slight and R. Scott Burn.
Edited by Henry Stephens, F.R.S.E.
Illustrated with 876 Engravings. One large Volume, uniform with the " Book
of the Farm," price £2, 2s.
The Book of the Garden.
By Charles M'Intosh.
In Two large Volumes, Royal Octavo, published separately.
Vol. I.— On the Furmation of Garrlens— Construction, TIeating, and Ventilation of Fruit
and Piant Housps, Pits, Frames, and other Garden Structures, witli Practical Details,
illustrated by 1073 Engravings, pp. 776. Price £2, lOs.
Vol Tl.— practical GARDENING— Contains : Directions for the Culture of the
Kitchen Garden, the Hardy-Fruit Garden, the Forcing Garden, and Flower Garden, includ-
ing Fruit and Plant Houses, with select Lists of Vegetables, Fruits, and Plants. Pp. 868,
with 279 Engravings. Price £1, 173. Cd.
A NXUA L P UBLICA TION.
The Year-Book of Agricultural Facts for 1860.
Edited by R. Scott Burn.
In Foolscap Octavo, price 5s.
Copies of the Volume for 1859 may be had, price 5s.
A Handy Book on Property Law.
By Lord St Leonards.
A New Edition, Enlarged, with Index, Crown Octavo, price 3s. 6d.
The Forester.
A Practical Treatise on the Formation of Plantations, the Planting, Rearing,
and Management of Forest Trees.
By James Brown,
Wood Manager to the Earl of Seafield, and Surveyor of Woods in general.
A Third Edition, Enlarged. In large Svo, with numerous Engravings on Wood,
price £1, 10s.
■ The grandest demigod I ever saw was Dr Carlyle, minister of Musselburgh, commonly called Jupiter Carlytti,'
flrom having sat more than once for the king of gods and men to Gavin Hamilton ; and a shrewd, clever
old cai'le was he."— Sik W. Scott.
In Octavo, ivith Portrait, price 14s.
ATJTOBIO&RAPHT
OF
DR ALEXANDER OARLTLE,
MINISTER OF INVERESK.
CONTAINING
MEMORIALS OF THE MEN AND EVENTS OF HIS TIME.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
Edinburgh Review, January 1861.
This book contains by far the most vivid picture of Scottish life and man-
ners that has been given to the public since the days of Sir Walter Scott. In
bestowing upon it this high i^raise, we make no exception, not even in favour
of Lord Cockburn's Memorials — the book which resembles it most, and which
ranks next to it in interest. Indeed, even going beyond the range of our Scot-
tish experience, we doubt whether there is anywhere to be found as trust-
worthy a record of the domestic, social, and intellectual life of a whole bygone
generation, or an appreciation of the individual peculiarities of the persons
by whom that generation was led, as shrewd and unprejudiced, as has been
oequeathed to us by this active, high-spirited, claret-di-inking, playgoing, and
yet, withal, worthy and pious minister of the Kirk.
National Review, January 1861.
A more delightful and graphic j'jicture of the overj'day life of our ancestors
it has never been our good fortune to meet with. . . . It is no slight thing,
after such a lapse of time, to have the illustrious men of that age resuscitated
bj'' the master hand of their contemporary, and brought again before us in body
and soul. With how different a feeling will many a student, when he arises
from the perusal of this Autobiography, glance his eye down the shelves of his
library, no longer dealing in his mind with empty names of standard authors,
but listening to the voices of real men, and entering into their writings in a far
more intelligent manner when he has seen them face to face. We do not often
pray for autobiographies — for, as a class of literature, they are of very unequal
merit — but we shall heartily rejoice to see as many more autol)iograpliies as
possible if they are half as well worth reading as Jupiter Carlyle's.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DR ALEX. CARLYLE.
Blackwood's Magazine.
Following; no master, moulding himself on no model, the charm of these
pages is their originality. They are not BosweUian, nor Johnsonian, nor Col-
ley Gibberish, nor traceable to any source. Yet in their liveliness of descrip-
tion, sly touches of satire, and vigorous analysis of character, combined with
the naturalness of incident and surprising variety of interest deduced from
ordinary- adventm-e, we are constantly reminded of Gil Bias.
Daily News.
It will surprise no one that this Autobiography — which, though composed
more than fifty years ago, has remained unpublished till now — should prove,
as it does, a veritable treasure of information anrl anecdote relating to Scotch
society in the last century. The period over which these reminiscences extend
is, indeed, nearly as interesting to English as to Scotch readers. To the great
majority of the former we do not hesitate to say that the chief cause of their
interest in Scotch historj' and Scotch manners has been their delighted famili-
arity with the Waverley novels. But while these have given them more or
less interest in every period of Scotch history, they have especially endeared to
them one period — the Scotland of "sixty years since" (from the date of the
publication of "Waverley") — the Scotland of the "Antiquary" and the "Heart
of Midlothian " — the Scotland which Scott himself knew and loved, and was
just in time to fix for ever on the canvass in immortal tints before it faded
away before the dawn of a new era. Now, this Autobiography is replete with
picture and anecdote of Scotch life and character of just this particular period.
. . . We might quote from almost every page to the amusement of our
readers, though to the questionable benefit of the jjublisher ; but we prefer to
recommend them to go themselves to the storehouse of entertainment and
instruction provided for them in the Autobiography of this fine old, enlightened,
liberal-minded Scotch divine.
Athenseiun.
This book overflows with pictui-es of life, character, and manners belonging
to the past century. A more racy volume of memoirs was never given to the
world — nor one more difficult to set forth — save by the true assertion, that
there is scarcely a page which does not contain matter for extract, or which
would not bear annotation. Every reader of the Scott novels (something like
every one who can read English) must delight in Jupiter Carlyle's Memoirs.
Daily Telegraph.
There are few autobiographies amongst those which have appeared of late to
compare with the one now before us. ... To the public we most cordially
recommend this volume as containing a great deal that is entertaining and
informing. Carlyle, as a man of enlarged mind, having enjoj'ed the society and
conversation of the most noted men of his time, has brought together in the
pages of his Autobiogi-aphy much that is worth knowing to all persons, espe-
cially to young men of the age, who may make a model to themselves advan-
tageously of this long career of a most gifted, agreeable, and amusing observer
of the events and personages of the last century.
Critic.
To say that he has written one of the most intensely-interesting books, which
we have devoured rather than read, is not to say enough in its favour. . . .
If a marvellous acuteness united to a happy though not always merciful power
of sarcasm — if an honest outspokenness, and a style pleasantly quaint and
always manly and forcible — if these qualities in an author can tend to produce
a good book, then Dr Carlyle's book ought to be a good one. He knew well
— and we must remind our readers that his knowledge was not of the common
vein — Adam Ferguson, John Home, Hume, Adam Smith, and three-fom-ths of
the men who made Scotch society in the last century the most delightful enjoy-
ment on earth. ... So rich is this volume in pictorial biography, that
we scarcely know from what portion of it to choose our extracts.
AUTOBIOGKAPHY OF DR ALEX. CARLYLE.
Literary Gazette.
A shrewd observer of men and manners, living during perhaps the most
deeply-interesting period of our history, he was favoured by a happy com-
bination of circumstances such as has seldom fallen to the lot of a single indi-
vidual. Sufficiently an actor in the eventful scenes of the last century to be
accepted as a reliable authority, yet sufficiently secluded from the world to
have leisure for a philosophic survey of the events that were passing around
him, he has bequeathed to us a picture of the times, which for breadth of
colouring and vividness of detail can scarcely be surpassed. . . . We lay
down this deeply-interesting volume with a sincere feeling of regret. For mar-
vellous originality and fidelity of description it is unsurpassed in the language.
Edinhurgli Witness.
Thus accomplished in mind, attractive in person, essentially social in nature,
and free from any taint of the over-religiousness that would have barred his
reception into much of the society of his times, Dr Carlyle became in suc-
cession the friend and guest of almost all the notability of his day. In spite
of his position as minister of the comf)aratively obscure parish of Inveresk,
scarcely a man of the age worth knowing in politics, literature, fashion, law,
medicine, or even in jihilosophy and metaphysics, but came within the wide
radius of his acquaintanceship. Few have escaped from the annotations of
his diligently recording, quietly humorous, yet not unfrequently sharp and
sarcastic pen. The charm of the Autobiography is not the life it professes
to record. It lies in its minutely daguerrcotyped views of the events and
manners of his times, and the faithful, life-like portraits ho has hung around
himself of his contemi:)oraries. The Autobiography is but the pollard round
which a thousand climbing plants have intertwined themselves, and which all
but cover with their rich foliage and flower the tree to which they owe their
support. We forget the minister of Inveresk as he brings us face to face with
the fixed, stern vengeance of the Porteous mob, or leads us through the scenes
of the '45 ; or recalls to us the form, the voice, the living person, of men whose
names are identified with the most stiiTing historical transactions of the last
century, and with our literature, philosophy, and science in their young and
palmy da}s, when Robertson, Hume, Hutchison, Home, Adam Smith, CuUen,
MacLaurin, and Black, were rising into fame, or reaping the well-earned
honours of their genius. By the brief, graphic touches that abound in this
volume, life is given back to the history of the last century ; and its actors,
known to us only through stately biographies, are translated from cold marble
figures once more into breathing men.
Scotsman.
The most curious and amusing, if not also, in all respects, the most valuable
contribution that has been made for many a day to the political, the ecclesias-
tical, but especially the social, history of Scotland.
Glasgow Herald.
A book of surpassing interest, and one which excites in us that feeling of
gratitiide with which we would receive an unexpected gift of great usefulness
and princely cost.
Liverpool AlTjion.
We wish to speak in the very highest terms of this most interesting book,
and to recommend its perusal to all of our readers who are interested in the
persons who lived, and the great events that happened, in our country one
hundred and fifty years ago. Dr Carlyle was only a Presbyterian minister of
the Established Church of Scotland, but he lived as an equal among the giants
of literature and politics who about that time made Edinburgh the intellectual
capital of the country, and his Autobiograjihy is full of pleasant notices of all
the best and greatest men of his time.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DR ALEX. CARLYLE.
Scottish Press.
_ Without question, a more valuable, and at the same time amusing, contribu-
tion to the literature of the domestic history of our country has not been made
for many years.
Caledonian Mercury.
This is the most readable and enjoyable book of its kind that has been issued
from the Edinburgh press for many years. . . . The volume has a distinct
historical value, as well as an enchaining and curious interest.
Inverness Courier.
It is one of the most valuable and entertaining works that has appeared
respecting the men and manners of Scotland in the eighteenth centurv, and is
written with so lively and graphic a pen that it cannot fail to become very
popular in the country.
Dundee Courier,
In the Autobiography of Dr Alexander Carlj'le we have one of the most
valuable contributions that have ever been made to the social annals of Scotland,
inasmuch as it is descriptive of a period of particular interest in the history of
our country, and of men of whom in general Scotland has just cause to be
proud. . . . The book is a perfect fea.st. No sooner has the reader entered
upon it than he is hurried along with the fascination of a romance. The
sketches of society are vivid and racy, and the author's delineations of character
appear true to a line, while his descriptions of men and manners are given with
a minuteness and fidelity worthy of the pen of Defoe.
Manchester Review.
One of the most valuable contributions to the literary and social history of
the eighteenth century that has ever been written ; so much so, indeed, as to
make us wonder why so charming a book should have been allowed to remain in
manuscript so many years.
Ayrshire Express.
Not only the publication of the season, but the most notable accession which
has been made to this barren yet peculiarly interesting department of our
national literature for many years.
Aberdeen Journal.
The book is one of the most remarkable which has appeared for a long time ;
and while it affords a great deal of matter suggestive of comment, it is pre-
eminently a book to be possessed, and read through and through, and over and
over again.
Fife Journal.
It is seldom one gets a photograph, as it were, of the days gone by so vivid
and true to the life as is aflforJed by a volume just published. . . . No book for
many years has been published so replete with reading for everybody — reading
which young and old, learned and unlearaed, alike will regard as interesting,
and read, and read, and read again.
Glasgow Examiner.
It can scarcely be opened without suggesting the strong common sense — the
deep sagacity — the dry humour— the cutting sarcasm — the far-sightedness of
the author. It has been truly said that there has been no such delineation of
the private life of our great men since Boswell's Johnson. . . . There is a
strength of thought, a grasp of intellect in his writing -beyond any writer we
remember. We shall recur to this wondrous volume again.
Dublin Evening Mail-
But we must conclude ; and in turning from a book to which we have directed
so unusually large a share of our attention, it is scarcely necessary to say that
we recommend it heartily to our readers. It is, in truth, one of the most
amusing and instructive which has fallen under our notice for many a day.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON.
BW5295.T91RES.ST0RAGE
English puritanism and its leaders:
Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library
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